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POETICAL QUOTATIONS 

Prije Selection* 

BEING 

FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS FROM ENGLISH 
AND AMERICAN POETS 

FROM CHAUCER TO THE PRESENT TIME 

SELECTED AND ARRANGED 
WITH INDEX 

BY 

C. W. MOULTON 

EDITOR OF " QUERIES " 



■ Whence is thy learning ? Hath thy toil 
O'er books consumed the midnight oil r ' 



BOSTON 

D. LOTHROP COMPANY 

WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD 






38670 

Copyright, 1887, by 
t). LOTHROP AND COMPANY. 



Electrotyped by 
C. J. Peters and Son, Boston. 



mi 









\ OTise, noble, lobetr anU lobing biit, 
tEfjese fjeart^ortt songs, a gift, 5 bring 
GTo tfjee, fofjose treetis, tfjg muses, sing 
Wqt poem of a perfect life," 



PRIZE SELECTIONS. 



3 

Jewels five-words-long, 
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time 
Sparkle forever. 

4 

Then why should those who pick and choose 

The best of all the best compose, 

And join it by mosaic art, 

In graceful order, part to part, 

To make the whole in beauty suit, 

Not merit as complete repute 

As those who, with less art and pains, 

Can do it with their native brains ? 

5 

And you, whom we all so adore, 

Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new ! - 
One word in your ear. There were Critics before 
And the man who plants cabbage imitates, too ! 

7 



Prize Selections. 

6 

A verse may find him who a sermon flies, 
And turn delight into a sacrifice. 

7 
And once I knew a meditative rose 
That never raised its head from bowing down ; 
Yet drew its inspiration from the stars. 
It bloomed and faded here beside the road, 
And, being a poet, wrote on empty air 
With fragrance all the beauty of its soul. 

8 
What is a sonnet ? Tis a pearly shell 

That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea ; 

A precious jewel carved most curiously ; 
It is a little picture painted well. 
What is a sonnet ? 'Tis the tear that fell 

From a great poet's hidden ecstasy ; 

A two-edged sword, a star, a song, 

9 
— Doth not song 
To the whole world belong ! 
Is it not given wherever tears can fall, 
Wherever hearts can melt, or blushes glow, 
Or mirth and sadness mingle as they flow, 
A heritage to all ? 



Prize Selections. 

10 
All days are birthdays in the life, 

The blessed life that poets live, 
Songs keep their own sweet festivals, 

And are the gifts, they come to give. 
The only triumph over Time 

That Time permits, is his who sings ; 
The poet Time himself defies 

By secret help of Time's own wings. 

ii 

Brother Bartholomew, working-time, 

Would fall into musing and drop his tools ; 

Brother Bartholomew cared for rhyme 
More than for theses of the schools ; 

And sighed, and took up his burden so, 
Vowed to the Muses, for weal or woe. 

12 

He walks with God upon the hills ! 
And sees, each morn, the world arise 
New-bathed in light of Paradise. 

He hears the laughter of her rills, 
Her melodies of manv voices, 
And greets her while his heart rejoices. 

She, to his spirit undented, 

Makes answer as a little child ; 

Unveiled before his eyes she stands, 
And gives her secrets to his hands. 



io Prize Selections. 

With no fond, sickly thirst for fame I kneel, 

goddess of the high-born art, to thee ; 
Not unto thee with semblance of a zeal 

1 come, O pure and heaven-eyed Poesy ! 
Thou art to me a spirit and a love, 

Felt even from the time when first the earth 
In its green beauty, and the sky above, 

Informed my soul with joy too deep for mirth. 

14 

Not mine the soul that pants not after fame — 
Ambitious of a poet's envied name, 
I haunt the sacred fount, athirst to prove 
The grateful influence of the stream I love. 

*S 

With thine compared, O sovereign Poesy, 
Thy sister Arts' divided powers how faint ! 

For each combines her attributes in thee, 

Whose voice is music, and whose words can paint. 

16 

I sometimes doubt 
If they have not, indeed, the better part — 
These poets, who get drunk with sun, and weep 
Because the night or a woman's face is fair. 



Prize Selections. II 

i7 

I carve the marble of pure thought until the thought 

takes form, 
Until it gleams before my soul and makes the world 

grow warm ; 
Until there comes the glorious voice and words that 

seem divine, 
And the music reaches all men's hearts and draws 

them into mine. 

18 

O world ! that listens, when too late, 

Unto the voice which sings, 
And loves the music, when the years 

Have shattered many strings, 
But little owes the bard to you 

For praises from your tongue, 
Who heard not when the harp was new, 

And love and life were young. 

A voice divinely sweet, a voice no less 
Divinely sad ; for all the maddening jar 

Of all the wide world's sin and wretchedness 
Swelled round its music, as when round a star 
Black storm-clouds gather and its white light mar. 

Pure music is pure bliss in heaven alone : 

Earth's air translates it to melodious moan. 



12 Prize Selections. 

20 

Guardian of thought, immortal memory ! 

Keep thou immortal some good thought of mine, 
Which, in oblivion's dark, may softly shine 

Like the pale fox-fire of a rotting tree. 
If thou do keep but one song-child alive, 
In its sweet body shall my soul survive. 

21 

Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound, 
She feels no biting pang the while she sings ; 

Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, 
Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things. 

22 
Come, with these God-anointed kings 

Be thou companion here, 
And in the mighty realm of mind 

Thou shalt go forth a peer. 

23 

The heart that suffers, most may sing, 
All beauty seems of sorrow born : 
This truth, half seen in life's young morn, 

Stands full and clear at evening. 

The gems of thought most highly prized 
Are tears of sorrow crystallized. 



Prize Selections. 1 3 

24 

This shall remain, this shall remain, 
Forever type of poet's pain. 
For he who souls of men may touch 
Must in himself have suffered much. 

25 
All rests with those who read. A work or thought 
Is that which makes it to himself, and may 
Be full of great dark meanings, like the sea, 
With shoals of life rushing. 

26 
Poets must ever be their own best listeners. 
No word from man to men 
Shall sound the same again ; 
Something is lost through all interpreters. 
Never for finest thought 
Can crystal words be wrought 
That to the crowd afar 
Shall show it — more than a telescope a star. 

27 
Like pearls that lie hid 'neath the ocean's broad breast, 

Where its waters unceasingly roll, 
Are our beautiful thoughts — our sweet unexpressed, 

That are lost in the depth of the soul. 



14 Prize Selections. 

28 
Man dwells apart, though not alone, 

He walks among his peers unread ; 
The best of thoughts which he hath known 

For lack of listeners are not said. 

29 
They who know the most 
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, 
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. 

30 
I have drank of a water 

That quenches all thirst : — 
Of a water that flows, 

With a lullaby sound, 
From a spring but a very few 

Feet under ground. 

3 1 

O thou God's mariner, heart of mine, 

Spread canvas to the airs divine ! 

Spread sail, and let thy fortune be 

Forgotten in thy Destiny. 

For Destiny pursues us well, 

By sea, by land, through heaven or hell ; 

It suffers Death alone to die, 

Bids life all change and chance defy. 



Prize Selections. 15 

32 
There's beauty waiting to be born, 

And harmony that makes no sound ; 
And bear we ever, unaware, 

A glory that hath not been crowned. 

33 

All outward wisdom yields to that within, 
Whereof no creed nor canon holds the key ; 

We only feel that we have ever been, 
And ever more shall be. 

34 

We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
thought. 

35 
My hopes are with the Dead ; anon 

My place with them will be, 
And I with them shall travel on 

Through all futurity ; 
Yet leaving here a name, I trust, 
That will not perish in the dust. 



1 6 Prize Selections. 

36 

The highest truths lie nearest to the heart ; 
No soarings of the soul can find out God. 
I saw a bee who woke one summer night, 
And taking the white stars for flowers, went up 
Buzzing and booming in the hungry blue ; 
And when its wings were weary with its flight, 
And the cold airs of morn were coming up, 
Lo ! the white flowers were melting out of view, 
And it came wheeling back — ah ! heavily — 
To the great laughing earth that gleam'd below \ 

37 
How fleet is the glance of the mind ! 

Compared with the speed of its flight, 
The tempest itself lags behind, 

And the swift-winged arrows of light. 

38 

Cause never dwelt in aught of sensuous kind ; 

Sole first and last of all that is, and was, 
And yet shall be, in Heaven or Earth, is Mind. 

39 
Small service is true service while it lasts : 

Of humblest Friends, bright creature ! scorn not one ; 
The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts, 

Protects the lingering dew-drop from the Sun. 



Prize Selections. 17 

40 
All service is the same with God — 
With God, whose puppets, best and worst, 
Are we : there is no last nor first. 

4i 
Nor deem the irrevocable Past 

As wholly wasted, wholly vain, 
If, rising on its wrecks, at last 

To something nobler we attain. 

42 
O rouse thee then, nor shun the glorious strife, — 
Extend, improve, enjoy thy hours of life : 
Assert thy reason, animate thy heart, 
And act through life's short scene the useful part : 
Then sleep m peace, by gentlest memory crown'd, 
Till time's vast year has fill'd its perfect round. 

43 

Never was day so over-sick with showers, 
But that it had some intermitting hours. 
Never was night so tedious, but it knew 
The last watch out, and saw the dawning too. 
Never was dungeon so obscurely deep, 
Wherein or light or day did never peep. 
Never did moon so ebb, or seas so wane, 
But that they left hope seed to fill up again. 



1 8 Prize Selections. 

44 
When our souls shall leave this dwelling, 
The glory of one fair and virtuous action 
Is above all the scutcheons on our tomb, 
Or silken banners over us. 

45 
Let us gather up the sunbeams 

Lying all around our path, 
Let us keep the wheat and roses, 

Casting out the thorns and chaff* 

46 

Sowing day is a silent day, 

Resting night is a silent night ; 

But whoso reaps the ripened corn 
Shall shout in his delight, 

While silences vanish away. 

47 
Going out to fame and triumph, 

Going out to love and light ; 
Coming in to pain and sorrow, 

Coming in to gloom and night. 
Going out with joy and gladness, 

Coming in with woe and sin ; — 
Ceaseless stream of restless pilgrims 

Going out and coming in ! 



Prize Selections. 19 

48 
I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty ; 
I woke, and found that life was Duty. 
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? 
Toil on* sad heart, courageously, 
And thou shalt find thy dream to be 
A noonday light and truth to thee. 

49 
Fading, fading, ever fading ! 

Is the weary heart's lament, 
Mourning that this transient shading 

Was not made more permanent ; 
Seeing not beneath this seeming 
The immortal features beaming 
Ever more distinct and clear, 
As these shadows disappear. 

5° 
Life is wasted if we spend it 

Idly dreaming how to die ; 
Study how to use, not end it ; 

Work to finish, not to fly. 
Godly living — best preparing 

For a life with God above ; 
Work ! and banish anxious caring ! 

Death ne'er comes to active love. 



20 Prize Selections. 

5 1 

I saw a wonderful light — 

Watching the midnight sky — 
Leap suddenly into the voiceless dark, 

And as suddenly die. 
Was it a golden lance, 

Into the silence hurled 
By the spirit of air ? a new-born star ? 

Or the wreck of a world ? 

52 
See where yon star falls headlong, flashing 
Across the purple twilight air ! — 
An angel, swift-winged, bears from heaven 
The answer to a mortal's prayer. 

53 
Tired, tired and spent, the day is almost run, 

And oh, so little done ! 
Above, and far beyond, far out of sight, 

Height over height, 
I know the distant hills I should have trod, — 

The hills of God, — 
Lift up their airy peaks, crest over crest, 

Where I had prest 
My faltering, weary feet, had strength been given, 

And found my Heaven. 



Prize Selections. 21 

54 
Be like the sun, that pours its ray 
To glad and glorify the day. 
Be like the moon, that sheds its light, 
To bless and beautify the night. 
Be like the stars, that sparkle on, 
Although the sun and moon are gone. 
Be like the skies, that steadfast are, 
Though absent sun and moon and star. 

55 
Let those who hope for brighter shores no more 

Not mourn, but inland bravely seek 
What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore. 

The strong must build stout cabins for the weak ; 
Must plant and stint ; must sow and reap and store ; 
For grain takes root though all seems bare and 
bleak. 

56 

" Labor is worship ! " — the robin is singing ; 

" Labor is worship ! " — the wild bee is ringing ; . 

Listen ! that eloquent whisper, upspringing, 

Speaks to thy soul from out Nature's great heart. 
From the dark cloud flows the life-giving shower ; 
From the rough sod blows the soft-breathing flower ; 
From the small insect, the rich coral bower : 

Only man, in the plan, shrinks from his part. 



22 Prize Selections. 

57 
A chance may win what by mischance was lost ; 
The net that holds no great takes little fish ; 
In some things all, in all things none are crossed ; 
Few all things need, and none have all they wish ; 
Unmingled joys here to no man befall ; 
Who least, hath some ; who most, hath never all. 

58 
" Laborare est orare," 

Sang a monk of ancient time ; 
Sang it at his early matin, 

Sang it at the vesper chime. 
" Work is worship ; " God, my brothers, 

Takes our toils for homage sweet, 
And accepts as signs of worship 

Well-worn hands and w r earied feet. 



59 
Rest is not quitting 

The busy career ; 
Rest is the fitting 

Of self to its sphere. 
'Tis loving and serving 

The highest and best ; 
'Tis onward ! unswerving, ■ 

And that is true rest. 



Prize Selections. 23 

60 
Catch, then, O catch the transient hour ; 

Improve each moment as it flies ; 
Life's a short summer, man a flower ; 

He dies, — alas ! how soon he dies ! 

61 

. Go, ponder well and patiently, 

Not knowing what your thought may yield, 
But waiting for the mystery 
Of what shall be revealed. 

62 

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise : 

He who defers this work from day to day, 

Does on a river's bank expecting stay, 

Till the old stream that stopp'd him shall be gone, 

Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on. 

63 

They tell this curious thing, besides, of the patient, 

plodding weaver : 
He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for 

the right side ever. 
It is only when the weaving stops, and the web is 

loosened and turned, 
That he sees his real handiwork — that his marvellous 

skill is learned. 



24 Prize Selections. 

64 

He lives at ease who freely lives. 
A noble heart may have no ease, 
Nor else naught that may him please, 
If freedom fails. 

6S 

Life is unutterably dear, 

God makes to-day so fair; 
Though Heaven is better, — being here 

I long not to be there. 

66 
O, what a glory doth this world put on 
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth, 
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks 
On duties well performed, and days well spent ! 

67 

Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem : 
There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground 
But holds some joy, of silence or of sound, 

Some sprite begotten of a summer dream. 

68 
What times are little ? To the sentinel 
That hour is regal when he mounts on guard. 



Prize Selections. 25 

69 

Rouse thee, man ! Shake off this hideous death ! 
Be man ! Stand up ! Draw in a mighty breath ! 
This world has quite enough emasculate hands, 

Dallying with doubt and sin. 

Come — here is work — begin ! 

70 

First, find thou Truth, and then, 

Although she strays 
From beaten paths of men 

To untrod ways, 
Her leading follow straight, 

And bide thy fate ; 
And whether smile or scorn 

Thy passing greet, 
Or find'st thou flower or thorn 

Beneath thy feet, 
Fare on ! nor fear thy fate 

At Heaven's gate. 

7i 

They soon grow old who grope for gold 
In marts where all is bought and sold : 
Who live for self and on some shelf 
In darkened vaults hoard up their pelf, 
Cankered and crusted o'er with mold. 
For them their youth itself is old. 



26 Prize Selections. 

72 

Go, thou who standest there, 

Tranquilly dreaming, 
Learn jthe stern truths that lie 

Under all seeming. 
Feeding the pride of life. 

Thou thyself starvest ; 
Thine is the seed time now, 

Whose is the harvest ? 

73 

Wanted : Deeds. 
Not wards of winning note, 
Not thoughts from life remote, 
Not fond religious airs, 
Not sweetly languid prayers, 
Not love of scent and creeds* 

Wanted : Deeds. 

74 
The fault of the age is a mad endeavor 

To leap to heights that were made to climb ; 
By a burst of strength or a thought that is clever, 

We plan to outwit and forestall Time. 
We scorn to wait for the thing worth having ; 

We want high noon at the day's dim dawn ; 
We find no pleasure in toiling and saving 

As our forefathers did in the good time gone. 



Prize Selections. 27 

75 
When I began the world first, it was not then as now, 
For all was plain and simple then, and friends were 

kind and true ; 
Oh, the times, the weary times, the times that I now 

see ; 
I think the world is all gone wrong, from what it used 

to be. 

76 

Salt of the earth, ye virtuous few, 

Who season human kind ; 
Light of the world, whose cheering ray 

Illumes the realms of mind : 
Where Misery spreads her deepest shade, 

Your strong compassion glows : 
From your blest lips the balm distils, 

That softens mortal woes. 

77 
In the still air the music lies unheard ; 

In the rough marble beauty hides unseen ; 
To make the music and the beauty needs 

The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen. 
Great Master, touch us with thy skilful hand ; 

Let not the music that is in us die ; 
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us ; nor let, 

Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie ! 



28 Prize Selections. 

78 

Great are the symbols of being, but that which is sym- 

boled is greater ; 
Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward 

creator ; 
Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift 

stands the giving, 
Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive 

nerves of receiving. 

79 

After the storm comes the rainbow; the sapling that 
bends soon uprises; 

After despairing, our life is oft full of sweetest sur- 
prises. 

After the loss the regaining ; the foot once entangled 

is surest; 
Out of the deadliest poison cometh the antidote purest. 

80 
There's a fount about to stream, 
There's a light about to beam, 
There's a warmth about to glow, 
There's a flower about to blow ; 
There's a midnight blackness changing into gray. 
Men of thought and men of action, clear the way ! 



Prize Selections. 29 

81 
Deaf to its roar are those who make their home 

Where sheer Niagara jars the primeval rock : 
Let them but go and come : the awful boom 

Strikes on their new-born ears with thund'rous shock ! 
Blind are these eyes, except they note some change — 

They cannot see, until by contrast taught ; 
Then how obtuse, how narrow in their range 

Are human senses and is human thought. 

82 
For right is right, since God is God ; 

And right the day must win ; 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 

To falter would be sin ! 

83 

Ah ! 'tis our spirit's curse to strive and seek ; 
Although its heart is rich in pearls and ores, 
The sea complains upon a thousand shores ; 

Sea-like, we moan for ever. 

84 

Be wise to-day : 'tis madness to defer. 

• 85 

Thy Real drinks music from Ideal Thought, 
And Earth but avenues the gate to Heaven. 



30 Prize Selections. 

86 

The heifer that lows in the upland farm, 

Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; 

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, 

Deems not that great Napoleon 

Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height ; 

Nor knowest thou what argument 

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 

All are needed by each one ; 

Nothing is fair or good alone. 

87 

I said it in the meadow-path, 

I say it on the mountain stairs — 
The best things any mortal hath 

Are those which every mortal shares. 
The air we breathe — the sky — the breeze — 

The light without us and within — 
Life, with its unlocked treasuries — 

God's riches — are for all to win. 

This above all — to thine own self be true. 

89 

The lowest genius will afford some light. 



Prize Selections. 31 

90 
Above the vulgar flight of common souls. 

9 1 
Press on ! surmount the rocky steeps, 

Climb boldly o'er the torrent's arch ; 
He fails alone who feebly creeps ; 

He wins who dares the hero's march. 
Be thou a hero ! let thy might 

Tramp on eternal snows its way, 
And through the ebon walls of night, 

Hew down a passage unto day. 

92 

Now let us thank the Eternal Power : convinced 
That Heaven but tries our virtues by affliction, — 
That oft the cloud which wraps the present hour 
Serves but to brighten all our future days. 

93 
What if the days are dreary? 

What if the desert glows 
Beneath life's bitter sun-beat ? 

What if the wild wind blows 
Out of the North-Land stormy ? 

What if Earth wears no smile ? 
A gate will open outward 

In such a little while ! 



32 Prize Selections.* 

94 
Ah ! it is ever thus ; we cannot throw 
Into fine action all our purest glow ; 
We are hedged in by some dark boundary ; 
And so our highest sinks to lesser high. 
Somewhat we ever fail to fairly do, 
Of what we see of beautiful and true ; 
Our act is ever lower than our sight. 

95 

My life, which was so straight and plain, 
Has now become a tangled skein, 

Yet God still holds the thread ; 
Weave as I may, His hand doth guide 
The shuttle's course, however wide 

The chain in woof be wed. 

9 6 

Another May new buds and flowers shall bring : 
Ah ! why has happiness no second Spring ? 

97 

How fading are the joys we dote upon ! 

Like apparitions seen and gone ; 

But those which soonest take their flight 

Are the most exquisite and strong ; 
Like angels' visits, short and bright, 

Mortality's too weak to bear them long. 



Prize Selections. 33 

98 

One for the cravings of his life provides, 

One weaves himself another way to live, 

To reach the secret is beyond our lore, 

And man must rest, till God doth furnish more. 

99 

Think all you speak ; but speak not all you think : 
Thoughts are your own ; your words are so no more. 

Where Wisdom steers, wind cannot make you sink : 
Lips never err, when she does keep the door. 

100 
Do naught but good ; for such the noble strife 

Of virtue is, 'gainst wrong to venture love, 
And for thy foe devote a brother's life, 

Content to wait the recompense above ; 
Brave for the truth, to fiercest insult meek, 
In mercy strong, in vengeance only weak. 

101 

Live while you live, the epicure would say, 
And seize the pleasures of the present day ; 
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, 
And give to God each moment as it flies. 
Lord, in my views, let both united be ; 
I live in pleasure when I live to thee. 



34 Prize Selections. 

102 
Raise me above the vulgar's breath, 
Pursuit of fortune, fear of death, 

And all in life that's mean ; 
Still true to reason be my plan, 
Still let my actions speak the man, 

Through every various scene. 

103 

Oh righteous doom, that they who make 

Pleasure their only end, 
Ordering the whole life for its sake, 

Miss that whereto they tend ; 
While they who bid stern Duty lead, 

Content to follow, they 
Of duty only taking heed, 

Find pleasure by the way. 

104 

To toil, to think, to long, to grieve, — 

Is such my future fate ? 
The morn was dreary, must the eve 

Be also desolate ? 
Well, such a life at least makes Death 

A welcome, wished-for friend ; 
Then, aid me, Reason, Patience, Faith, 

To suffer to the end ! 



Prize Selections. 35 

™5 

Is it worth while that we jostle a brother 
Bearing his load on the rough road of life ? 

Is it worth while that we jeer at each other 

In blackness of heart ? — that we war to the knife ? 
God pity us all in our pitiful strife. 

106 
Wisdom ripens unto Silence as she grows more truly 

wise, 
And she wears a mellow sadness in her heart and in 

her eyes : 
Wisdom ripens unto Silence, and the lesson she doth 

teach, 
Is that life is more than language, and that thought is 

more than speech. 

107 
Full oft the longing soul goes out 

On wing of song its good to find, 
And flying far o'er flood and doubt 

Its ark of bondage leaves behind. 

108 

With outstretched hands, in dark and gloom, 
We grope our way, we know not where ; 

Uncertain shades beside a tomb ; 

Oh i birds, your wailing seems despair ! 



36 Prize Selections. 

109 
Ye who have felt the delirium of passion, 

Say, can you sever its joys and its pangs ? 
Is there a power in calm contemplation 

To indicate each upon each as it hangs ? 
I would believe not ; for spirit will languish, 

While sense is most blest and creation most bright ; 
And life will be dearer and clearer in anguish, 

Than ever was felt in the throbs of delight. 

no 

God is its author, and not man ; he laid 
The key-note of all harmonies ; he planned 

All perfect combinations, and he made 
Us so we could hear and understand. 

in 

To scorn the promise of the Real ; 

To seek and seek and not to find ; 
Yet cherish yet the fair Ideal, — 

It is thy fate, O restless Mind ! 

112 

Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts ! 
Rolling wave-like on the mind's strange shore, 
Rustling leaf-like through it evermore, 

Oh that they might follow God's good Hand ! 



Prize Selections. 37 

113 

What though the good, the brave, the wise, 
With adverse force undaunted rise, 

To break the eternal doom ! 
Though Cato lived, though Tully spoke, 
Though Brutus dealt the godlike stroke, 

Yet perish'd fated Rome. 

114 

The winds that once the Argo bore 

Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines, 
And her hull is the drift of the deep sea floor, 

Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines. 
You may seek her crew in every isle, 

Far in the foam of ^Egean seas, 
But out of their sleep no charm can wile 

Jason and Orpheus and Hercules. 

"5 

Not to myself alone, — 
O Man, forget not thou — earth's honored priest! 
Its tongue, its soul, its life, its pulse, its heart — 
In earth's great chorus to sustain thy part. 
Chiefest of guests at Love's ungrudging feast, 
Play not the niggard ; spurn thy native clod, 

And self disown : 
Live to thy neighbor, live unto thy God, 
Not to thyself alone. 



38 Prize Selections. 

116 

Till some of us learn, as did some of you, 

To try a manlier way, — 
To put into life a potency 

That will keep the grave at bay ; 
And count this brief experience 

That hangs upon a breath 
Our first sweet hint of the rounded whole, 

With its episode of death. 

117 

O soul ! 
Whilst yet unbodied thou didst summer there, 
God saw thee, led thee forth from thy green haunts, 
And bade thee know another world, less fair, 
Less calm ! Ambition, knowledge, and desire 
Drove from thee thy first worship. Live and learn ; 
Believe and wait ; and it may be that he 
Will guide thee back again to Wonderland. 

118 

The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung ; 

The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green ; 
My youth is gone, and yet I am but young; 

I saw the world, and yet I was not seen : 
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun ; 
And now I live, and now my life is done. 



Prize Selections. 39 

119 

Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance 
So far, to make us wish for ignorance, 
And rather in the dark to grope our way, 
Than, led by a false guide, to err by day ? 

120 

Plead, when the tempter's art 

To each fond hope of mine 
Denies this faithless heart 

Can e'er be thine. 
If slander whisper, too, 
The sin I never knew, 
Thou who would'st urge the true, 

Plead thou my cause. 

121 

Power, and wealth, and fame, 

Are but as weeds upon life's troubled tide : 
Give me but these, — a spirit tempest-tried, 

A brow unshrinking, and a soul of flame, 

The joy of conscious worth, its courage and its pride ! 

122 
I've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling, 

I've felt all its favors, and found its decay ; 
Sweet was its blessing, kind its caressing, 

But now 'tis fled, — fled far away. 



40 Prize Selections. 

123 

Hope, cheated too often, when life's in its spring, 
From the bosom that nursed it forever takes wing ! 
And Memory comes, as its promises fade, 
To brood o'er the havoc that Passion has made. 
As 'tis said that the swallow the tenement leaves 
Where the ruin endangers her nest in the eaves, 
While the desolate owl takes her place on the wall, 
And builds in the mansion that nods to its fall. 

124 

My good right hand forgets 

Its cunning now — 
To march the weary march 

I know not how. 
I am not eager, bold, 

Nor strong, — all that is past ; 
I am ready not to do, 

At last, at last. 

A bird sang sweet and strong 

In the top of the highest tree ; 
He sang — " I pour out my soul in song 

For the summer that soon shall be." 
But deep in the shady wood 

Another bird sang — " I pour 
My soul on the solemn solitude 

For the springs that return no more." 



Prize Selections. 41 

126 

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing 

For the far-off, unattained, and dim, 
While the beautiful, all around thee lying, 

Offers up its low, perpetual hymn ? 
Would'st thou listen to its gentle teaching, 

All thy restless yearnings it would still, 
Leaf and flower and laden bee are preaching 

Thine own sphere, though humble, first to fill. 

127 

Thou lookest to the clouds, — they fleet ; 
Thou turnest to the waves, — they falter ; 
The flower that decks the shrine, though sweet, 

Dies on its altar : 
And thou, more changeful than the cloud, 
More restless than the wandering rill, 
Like that lone flower in silence bowed, 

Poor heart ! be still. 

128 

Ah ! who can tell how many a soul sublime 

Has felt the influence of malignant star, 

And waged with Fortune an eternal war; 

Check'd by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, 

And Poverty's unconquerable bar, 

In life's low vale remote has pined alone, 

Then dropp'd into the grave, unpitied and unknown ! 



42 Prize Selections. 

129 

With joys unknown, with sadness unconfessed, 
The generous heart accepts the passing year, 

Finds duties dear, and labor sweet as rest, 
And for itself knows neither care nor fear. 

136 

Our joys as winged dreams do fly ; 

Why then should sorrow last ? 
Since grief but aggravates thy loss, 

Grieve not for what is past. 

So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms 
Of chill adversity ; in some lone walk 

Of life she rears her head, 

Obscure and unobserved ; 
While every bleaching breeze that on her blows, 
Chastens her spotless purity of breast, 

And hardens her to bear 

Serene the ills of life. 

132 

Wherever Truth her holy warfare wages, 

Or Freedom pines, there let thy voice be heard ; 

Sound like a prophet-warning down the ages 
The human utterance of God's living word. 



Prize Selections. 43 

*33 

Nothing great is lightly won, 

Nothing won is lost ; 
Every good deed nobly done 

Will repay the cost. 
Leave to Heaven, in humble trust, 

All you will to do ; 
But if you succeed, you must 

Paddle your own canoe. 

*34 
Hearts there are on the sounding shore, 

Something whispers soft to me, 
Restless and roaming for evermore, 

Like this weary weed of the sea ; 
Bear they yet on each beating breast 

The eternal type of the wondrous whole : 
Growth unfolding amidst unrest, 

Grace informing with silent soul. 

135 

Beneath this starry arch, 

Nought resteth or is still ; 

But all things hold their march 

As if by one great will. 

Moves one, move all ; 

Hark to the foot-fall ! 

On, on, for ever. 



44 Prize Selections* 

136 

Soldier, be strong, who fightest 

Under a Captain stout; 
Dishonor not thy conquering Head 

By basely giving out. 
Endure awhile, bear up, 

And hope for better things ; 
War ends in peace, and morning light 

Mounts upon midnight's wings. 

137 
Strength — as to skylark's wing — 

Comes from resistance long; 
Comes from the songs we sing ; 

Comes from suffering wrong. 
The more we beat the tides, 

The more we breast the winds, 
Strength through our pulses glides, 

Strength all our spirit binds* 

138 

Thy progression, not thy rest, — > 
Striving, not attaining, — 

Is the measure and the test 
Of thy hope remaining; 

Not in gain thou'rt half so blessed 
As in conscious gaining. 



Prize Selections. 45 

139 

For the right 
Man, even in despair, should ever strive : 
The very effort, howsoever vain, 
Is always something gained. To the great work 
It warms the blood of the world which wrestles on 
Still against failure, like the strong man struggling, 
Until the end of truth at last is reached. 



140 
Confide ye aye in Providence, for Providence is kind, 
And bear ye a' life's changes wi' a calm and tranquil 

mind. 
Though pressed and hemmed on every side, hae faith 

and ye'll win through, 
For ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o y dew. 



141 

I live for those who love me, 

For those who know me true, 
For the heavens that bend above me, 

And the good that I can do ; 
For the cause that needs assistance, 
For the wrongs that lack resistance, 
For the future in the distance, 
And the good that I can do. 



46 Prize Selections. 

142 - 

There is a resignation worse than murmur, 

An acquiescence vain, 
A giving-up that roots self-will the firmer, 

And silence may complain. 
Oh, give us, Lord, that living love unshaken 

That makes the heaviest cross 
Thou layest on us be by us self-taken, 

Makes sacrifice of loss. 

143 
Though boats go down, men build again 

Whatever wind may blow ; 
If blight be in the wheat one year, 

They trust again and sow. 
The grief comes, the change comes, 

The tides run high or low, 

144 
God's will is like a cliff of stone, 

My will is like the sea ; 
Each murmuring thought is only thrown 

Tenderly back to me. 
God's will and mine are one this day, 

And evermore shall be ; 
There is a calm in Life's tost bay, 

And the waves sleep quietly. 



Prize Selections. 47 

US 
Press onward through each varying hour; 

Let no weak fears thy course delay ; 
Immortal being ! feel thy power, 

Pursue thy bright and endless way. 

146 

A bold man or a fool must he be who would change 
his lot with another; 

It were a fearful bargain, and mercy hath lovingly re- 
fused it ; 

For we know the worst of ourselves, but the secrets of 
another we see not. 

147 
Talk who will of the world as a desert of thrall, 

Yet, yet there is bloom on the waste ; 
Though the chalice of Life hath its acid and gall, 

There are honey-drops, too, for the taste. 
We murmur and droop should a sorrow-cloud stay, 

And note all the shades of our lot ; 
But the rich rays of sunshine that brighten our way, 

Are bask'd in, enjoy'd, and forgot. 

148 
We'll warm our hearts, and softly sing 

Thanks for the shore whereon we're driven ; 
Storm-tossed no more, we'll fold the wing, 

And dream forgotten dreams of heaven. 



48 Prize Selections. 

149 

I saw a snowflake in the air 

When smiling May had decked the year, 
And then 'twas gone, I knew not where, — 
I saw a snowflake in the air, 
And thought perchance an angel's prayer 

Had fallen from a starry sphere ; 
I saw a snowflake in the air, 

When smiling May had decked the year. 

O time too swift ! O swiftness never ceasing ! 

Man's life's a book of history, 
The leaves thereof are days, 

The letters mercies closely joined, 
The title is thy praise. 

IS? 
Like as the damask rose you see, 
Or like the blossom on the tree, 
Or like the dainty flower in May, 
Or like the morning of the day, 
Qr like the sun, or like the shade, 
Or like the gourd which Jonas had, — 
E'en such is man ; whose thread is spun, 
Drawn out, and cut, and so is done. 



Prize Selections. 49 

A little rule, a little sway, 

A sunbeam in a winter's day, 
Is all the proud and mighty have 

Between the cradle and the grave. 

Man's life is like unto a winter's day, 
Some break their fast and so departs away, 
Others stay dinner, then departs full fed ; 
The longest age but sups and goes to bed. 

iS5 

How short is life's uncertain space ! 

Alas ! how quickly done ! 
How swift the wild precarious chase ! 
And yet how difficult the race ! 

How very hard to run ! 

156 

Man's a poor deluded bubble, 

Wand'ring in a mist of lies, 
Seeing false, or seeing double ; 

Who would trust to such weak eyes ? 
Yet presuming on his senses, 

On he goes, most wondrous wise ; 
Doubts of truth, believes pretences ; 

Lost in error, lives and dies. 



5o 



Prize Selections. 



157 
It is a weary interlude — 
Which doth short joys, long woes, include : 
The world the stage, the prologue tears ; 
The acts vain hopes and varied fears ; 
The scene shuts up with loss of breath, 
And leaves no epilogue but Death I 

158 

Oh, a wonderful stream is the "River Time, 

As it runs through the realm of Tears, 
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme, 
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime 
As it blends with the ocean of Years, 






159 

We are born ; we laugh ; we weep ; 

We love ; we droop ; we die ! 
Ah ! wherefore do we laugh or weep ? 

Why do we live or die ? 
Who knows that secret deep? 
Alas, not 1 1 

160 
And this is Life : ethereal fire 

Striving aloft through smothering clay, 
Mounting, flaming, higher, higher! 

Till lost in immortality. 



Prize Selections, 51 

161 

I wonder at myself ! Tell me, O Death, 

If that thou rul'st the earth : if "dust to dust " 
Shall be the end of love and hope and strife, 
From what rare land is blown this living breath 
That shapes itself to whispers of strong trust, 
And tells the lie — if 'tis a lie — of life? 

162 
If life be as a flame that death doth kill, 
Burn, little candle, lit for me, 
With a pure flame, that I may rightly see 
To word my song, and utterly 
God's plan fulfil. 

163 
Moan, moan^ ye dying gales ! 
The saddest of your tales 

Is not so sad as life ; 
Nor have you e'er began 
A theme so wild as man, 

Or with such sorrow rife. 

164 
If Life an empty bubble be, 
How sad are those who will not see 
A rainbow in the bubble ! 






$2 Prize Selections. 

i6 S - 
The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man 

Less than a span : 
In his conception wretched, from the womb 

So to the tomb ; 
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years 

With cares and fears. 
Who then to frail mortality, shall trust, 
But limns on water, or but writes in dust. 



166 

Time is the measure but of change : 

No present hour is found ; . 
The past, the future, fill the range 

Of Time's unceasing round. 
Where, then, is now ? In realms above, 

With God's atoning Lamb : 
In regions of eternal love, 

Where sits enthroned I Am. 



167 
From morning suns and evening dews 

At first thy little being came : 
If nothing once, you nothing lose, 
For when you die you are the same ; 
The space between is but an hour, 
The frail duration of a flower. 



Prize Selections. 53 

168 
Life's but a leaf, adroitly rolled, 

And Time's the wasting breath, 
That, late or early, we behold, 

Gives all to dusty death. 

169 
Say, what is life ? 'Tis to be born ; 

A helpless babe to greet the light 
With a sharp wail, as if the morn 

Foretold a cloudy noon and night; 
To weep, to sleep, and weep again, 
With sunny smiles between — and then ? 

170 

Remorseless Time ! 
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe ! — what power 
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt 
His iron heart to pity ? 



171 

The glory dies not, and the grief is past. 

172 

To die is landing on some silent shore, 
Where billows never break, nor tempests roar; 
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er. 



54 Prize Selections. 

See how the great Goliah, 
Just like a child that brawl'd itself to rest, 
Lies still. 

174 

Fool! I mean, not 
That poor-souled piece of heroism, self-slaughter; 
Oh no ! the miserablest day we live 
There's many a better thing to do than die ! 

i7S 
There is no death ! the stars go down 

To rise upon some other shore, 
And bright in heaven's jewelled crown 

They shine for evermore. 

176 

Two aged men, that had been foes for life, 

Met by a grave, and wept — and in those tears 

They washed away the memory of their strife ; 
Then wept again the loss of all those years. 

177 
O Death, thy certainty is such, 

The thought of thee so fearful, 
That musing, I have wonder'd, much, 

How men are ever cheerful. 



Prize Selections. 55 

178 

Death is a common friend or foe, 

As different men may hold, 
And at its summons each must go, 

The timid and the bold ; 
But when the spirit, free and warm, 

Deserts it, as it must, 
What matter where the lifeless form 

Dissolves again to dust ? 

179 

I wonder what day of the week, — 
I wonder what month of the year, — 

Will it be midnight, or morning, — 
And who will bend over my bier ? 

180 
Thou art alive, O grave, — 
Thou with thy living grass, 
Blown of all winds that pass, — 
Thou with thy daisies white, 
Dewy at morn and night, — 
Thou on whose granite stone 
Greenly the moss has grown, — 
Thou on whose holy mound, 
Through the whole summer round, 
Sweetly the roses thrive, — 
Thou art alive ! 
O grave, thou art alive ! 



56 Prize Selections. 

181 • 

For what to us seems dying 

Is but another birth, 
A spirit upward flying 

From the broken shell of earth. 
We are the dead, the buried, 

We who do yet survive, 
In the grave of sense interred, — 

The dead, — they are alive. 

182 
Of all that has been, sum and history 
Of all that shall be, source and prophecy ; 
This living Past, present Futurity ; 

This Was and Is, and Shall be so — 
We may not know. 
We ? — we are but men. 

Alone 

God sitteth on his throne. 

Amen ! 

183 

There are they who toil, 
And they who strive, and they who feast, and they 
Who hurry to and fro. The sturdy hind — 
Woodman and delver with the spade — are there, 
And busy artisan beside his bench, 
And pallid student with his written roll. 
A moment on the mounting billow seen — 
The flood sweeps over them and they are gone. 



Prize Selections. 57 

184 

I gazed on the babe at its mother's breast, 

And asked for the secret of life and rest; 

It turned with a smile that was sad and lone, 

And murmured in dreaming, " Unknown," "unknown." 

185 

•Life's race well run, 
Life's work well done, 
Life's crown well won, 
Now comes rest. 

186 

The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or 
intent. 

So those who enter death must go as little children 
sent. 

Nothing is known. But I believe that God is over- 
head ; 

And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead. 

187 

Weep for the life-charm early flown, 
The spirit broken, bleeding, lone ; 
Weep for the death-pangs of the heart, 
Ere being from the bosom part ; 
But never be a tear-drop given 
To those that rest in yon blue heaven. 



58 



Prize Selections. 



188 

When Death strikes down the innocent and young, 
From every fragile form, from which he lets 

The parting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, 
In shape of Mercy, Charity, and Love 

To walk the world and bless it. 
Of every tear 
That sorrowing Nature sheds on such green graves, 
Some good is born, some gentle nature comes. 

189 
Down the dim vista of the vanished years 

I gaze sad-hearted, 
And see through gathering mists of blinding tears, 

Loved ones departed. 

190 

Waiting for her loved ones, this is woman's lot, 
In the stately palace or the lowly cot, 
And when death shall claim her she will go before, 
And await their coming on the other shore. 



191 

Over the river they beckon to me, — 

Loved ones who've crossed to the farther side ; 

The gleam of their snowy robes I see, 

But their voices are drown'd in the rushing tide. 



Prize Selections. 59 

192 

If He should call us home before 
The children go on that blessed shore, 

Afar from care and sin, 
I know that I shall watch and wait, 
Till he, the keeper of the gate, 

Lets all the children in. 



193 

But O for the meeting to come one day, 
When the spirit slips out of its house of clay • 
When the standers-by with a gentle sign 
Shall kindly cover this face of mine, 
And I leap — whither ? — ah, who can know ? 
But outward, outward, as spirits must go, 
Till eye to eye without fear I see 
God — and my lost — as they see me. 

194 

The silver cord in twain is snapped, 

The golden bowl is broken, 
The mortal mould in darkness wrapped, 

The words funereal spoken 
The tomb is built, or the rock is cleft, 

Or delved is the grassy clod ; 
And what for mourning man is left — 

Oh, what is left — but God ? 



6o 



Prize Selections, 



m 

The strife is o'er — Death's seal is set 

On ashy lips and marble brow ; 
'Tis o'er, though faintly lingers yet 

Upon the cheek a life-like glow : 
The feeble pulse hath throbb'd its last, 

The aching head is laid at rest — 
Another from our ranks hath pass'd, 

The dearest and the loveliest. 

196 
Would it be worth the having or the giving, 

The boon of endless breath ? 
Ah, for the weariness that comes of living 

There is no cure but death ! 
Ours were indeed a fate deserving pity, 

Were that sweet rest denied ; 
And few, methinks, would care to find the city 

Where never any died ! 

197 
Out of the Snow, the Snowdrops — out of Death 
Comes Life. 

198 
Yes, ye are made immortal on the day 
Ye cease the dusty grains of time to weigh. 



I 



Prize Selections. 



61 



199 
We parted in the Summer time, 

When life was bold and brave — 
I did not think that Autumn leaves 

Would rustle o'er thy grave ; 
A year ago we two had watched 

Their gorgeous brightness fall — 
I little dreamed that those of Spring 

Were woven for thy pall. 

200 
One year ago, — a ringing voice, 

A clear blue eye, 
And clustering curls of sunny hair, 

Too fair to die. 
Only a year, — no voice, no smile, 

No glance of eye, 
No clustering curls of golden hair, 

Fair but to die ! 



201 



There is no end to the sky, 

And the stars are everywhere, 
And time is eternity, 

And the here is over there ; 
For the common deeds of the common day 
Are ringing bells in the far-away. 



62 Prize Selections. 

202 
When last the maple bud was swelling, 

When last the crocus bloom'd below, 
Thy heart to mine its love was telling, 

Thy soul with mine kept ebb and flow : — 
Again the maple bud is swelling, 

Again the crocus blooms below ; 
In heaven thy heart its love is telling, 

But still our souls keep ebb and flow. 

203 
Of what men are, and why they are, 

So weak, so w r ofully beguiled, 
Much have I learned, but better far, 

I know my soul is reconciled. 

204 

A butterfly bask'd on a baby's grave, 

Where a lily had chanced to grow : 
" Why art thou here, with thy gaudy dye, 
When she of the blue and sparkling eye 

Must sleep in the churchyard low ? " 
Then it lightly soar'd through the sunny air, 

And spoke from its shining track : 
" I was a worm till I won my wings, 
And she whom thou mourn'st, like a seraph, sings : 

Would'st thou call the blest one back ? " 



Prize Selections. 



63 



205 
Beyond the flight of time, 

Beyond this vale of death, 
There surely is some blessed clime 

Where life is not a breath, 
Nor life's affections transient fire, 
Whose sparks fly upward to expire. 

206 
Cloudy argosies are drifting down into the purple 
dark — 

Down into the fading west ; 
And the long low amber reaches lying on the horizon's 
mark 
Shape themselves into the gateways opening to the 
Land of Rest — 
Gateways leading thro' the sunset, out into the under 
world, 
Bright with pilgrim barges lying round the Islands 
of the Blest, 

With their white sails tranquil furled. 



207 
I hear a voice you cannot hear, 

Which says I must not stay ; 
I see a hand you cannot see, 

Which beckons me away. 



64 Prize Selections. 

208 
Yet think not to regain thy native sky, 
Borne on the wings of vain philosophy ; 
Mysterious passage ! hid from human eyes ; 
Soaring you'll sink, and sinking you will rise. 
Let humble thoughts thy wary footsteps guide, 
Regain by meekness what you lost by pride. 

209 
There's a land far away 'mid the stars, we are told, 

Where they know not the sorrows of time ; 
Where the pure waters wander through valleys of gold, 

And life is a treasure sublime : 
'Tis the land of our God, 'tis the home of the soul, 
Where ages of splendor eternally roll, 
Where the way-weary traveller reaches his goal 

On the evergreen mountains of life. 



O noble face ! your beauty bears 

The glory that is wrung from pain, — 
The high, celestial beauty wears 

Of finished work, of ripened grain. 
Of human care you left no trace, 

No lightest trace of grief or pain. — 
On earth an empty form and face — 

In Heaven stands the ripened grain. 



Prize Selections. 



65 



211 

Two mighty silences, two worlds unseen, 

Over against each other lie ; 
Forever boundlessly apart have been, 

Forever nigh. 
In one is God Himself, and angels bright 

Do congregate, and spirits fair ; 
And lost to sight in depths of mystic light, 
Our dead dwell there ! 

212 

Tis sweet to think the pure ethereal being, 

Whose mortal form reposes with the dead, 
Still hovers round unseen, yet not unseeing, 

Benignly smiling o'er the mourner's bed ! 
She comes in dreams, a thing of light and lightness ; 

I hear her voice in still small accents tell 
Of realms of bliss and never-fading brightness, 

Where those who loved on earth together dwell. 



213 

The soul, secured in her existence, smiles 
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. 
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, 
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, 
Unhurt amidst the war of elements, 
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds. 



66 Prize Selections. 

214 

When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers, 
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold, 
And kindred spirits meet to part no more. 

The soul of man alone, that particle divine, 
Escapes the wreck of worlds when all things fail. 

216 

No light e'er lay in loved one's eye, 

Or passion on the lover's tongue, 
As tenderly as thoughts will lie 

The dimmest memories among. 
No smiles that rising morn may wear 

Are blest as shades when evening nears ; 
No wakefulness, however fair, 

As beautiful as sleep of years. 

217 

O listen, man ! 
A voice within us speaks that startling word, 
"Man, thou shalt never die ! " Celestial voices 
Hymn it unto our souls ; according harps, 
By angel fingers touched when the mild stars 
Of morning sang together, sound forth still 
The song of our great immortality. 



Prize Selections. 67 

218 

I do not see 
Why God should e'en permit some things to be, 

When He is love ; 

But I can see, 
Though often dimly through the mystery, 

His hand above ! 

219 
Somehow, we know not how ; somewhere, but where 
We know not ; by some hand, we know not whose, 
Joy must absorb the whole wide world's despair. 
This we call Faith : but if we dare impose 
Form on this faith, we shall but beat the air, 
Or build foundations on the baseless ooze. 

220 
No sister e'er hath been to thee with pearly eyes of love ; 
No mother e'er hath wept for thee, an outcast from 

above ; 
No hand hath come from out the cloud to wash thy 

scarred face ; 
No voice to bid thee lie in peace, the noblest of thy 

race : 
But bow thee to the God of love, and all shall yet be 

well, 
And yet in days of holy rest and gladness thou shalt 

dwell. 



68 



Prize Selections. 



221 

Full many a vessel threads the gates of morn, 
With spreading sails, and gold upon its prow, 
That ere the eve will bend beneath the storm. 
And we — how know we if our moments run 
To break on joy or sorrow ? We can hope, 
But hope itself is born of doubt, my friends, 
Always in bud but never quite a flower. 

222 
Just as I am, of that free love 
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove> 
Here for a season, then above, 
O Lamb of God, I come ! 

223 

Just as thou art, without one trace 
Of love or joy or inward grace, 
Or meetness for the heavenly place, — 
O guilty sinner, come ! 



224 
Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom 

Lead thou me on ! 
The night is dark, and I am far from home — 

Lead thou me on ! 
Keep thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene, — one step enough for me. 



Prize Selections. 69 

225 
Near, so very near to God, 

Nearer I cannot be ; 
For in the person of his Son 

I am as near as he. 

226 

somewhere, somewhere, God unknown, 

Exist and be ! 

1 am dying, I am all alone ; 

I must have thee ! 
God ! God ! my sense, my soul, my all, 

Dies in the cry : — 
Saw'st thou the faint star flame and fall ? 

Ah ! it was I. 

227 
Abide with me ! fast falls the even-tide ; 
The darkness deepens ; Lord, with me abide ! 
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 
Help of the helpless, oh abide with me ! 

228 
Jesus ! cast a look on me, 
Give me sweet simplicity, 
Make me poor and keep me low, 
Seeking only thee to know. 



j 






70 Prize Selections. 

229 

We would be one in hatred of all wrong, 
One in our love of all things sweet and fair, 

One with the joy that breaketh into song, 

One with the grief that trembleth into prayer, 

One in the power that makes Thy Children free 

To follow Truth, and thus to follow Thee. 

230 
O blessed Life ! O sweet, fair home and rest! 

Unruffled in its purity of joy : 
Home ! with enfranchised spirits ever blessed; 

God's praise the happy heart's serene employ ;• 
Sin and Time's Fret, and all its troubles o'er , 

Heaven's perfect peace — Light! Light for Ever- 
more ! 

231 

Life's woes without, sin's strife within, 

The heart would overflow, 
But for that love which died for sin, 

That love which wept with woe. 

232 
How strange is the course that a Christian must steer ! 

How perplexed is the path he must tread ! 
The hope of his happiness rises from fear, 

And his life he receives from the dead. 



Prize Selections. 



71 



233 
We look to thee ! thy truth is still the Light 

Which guides the nations, groping on their way, 
Stumbling and falling in disastrous night, 

Yet hoping ever for the perfect day. 
Yes ; thou art still the Life, thou art the Way 

The holiest know ; Light, Life, the Way of heaven ! 
And they who dearest hope and deepest pray 

Toil by the Light, Life, Way, which thou hast given. 

234 
Good when he gives, supremely good, 

Nor less, when he denies ; 
E'en crosses, from his sovereign hand, 

Are blessings in disguise. 

235 
Earth has joy unknown in heaven — 
The new-born peace of sin forgiven ! 
Tears of such pure and deep delight, 
Ye Angels ! never dimmed your sight. 



236 
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow ; 
Praise Him, all creatures here below ; 
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host ; 
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 



72 Prize Selections. 

237 
Tarry with me, O my Saviour ! 

For the day is passing by ; 
See, the shades of evening gather, 

And the night is drawing nigh ; 
Tarry with me — tarry with me ! 

Pass me not unheeded by ! 

238 
All glory be to God on high, 

And to the earth be^peace ; 
Good will henceforth from Heaven to men 

Begin, and neyer cease. 

239 
I love (and have some cause to love) the earth ; 
She is my Maker's creature : therefore good : 
She is my mother, for she gave me birth ; 
She is my tender nurse — she gave me food; 
But what's a creature, Lord, compared with thee ? 
Or what's my mother, or my nu.se to me ? 

240 
All hail the power of Jesus' name ! 

Let angels prostrate fall ; 
Bring forth the royal diadem, 

To crown Him Lord of all ! 



Prize Selections, 73 

241 
Jesus, Lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy bosom fly, 
While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high ! 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 

Till the storm of life is past ; 
Safe into the haven guide, 

O receive my soul at last ! 

242 

Nothing in my hand I bring, 
Simply to Thy Cross I cling ; 
Naked, come to Thee for dress ; 
Helpless, look to Thee for grace ; 
Foul, I to the Fountain fly; 
Wash me, Saviour, or I die. 

243 
The day is ended. Ere I sink to sleep, 
My weary spirit seeks repose in thine ; 
Father, forgive my trespasses and keep 

This little life of mine. 
With loving-kindness curtain thou my bed, 

And cool in rest my burning pilgrim feet ; 
Thy pardon be the pillow for my head, — 
So shall my sleep be sweet. 






74 Prize Selections, 

244 
What do we lay before " our Father's " throne ? 
The broken heart the world hath trampled on, 
But could not heal ; the bruised hopes flung back 
From Caesar's throne, when our reward we lack ; 
Hyssop and vinegar : How oft they be 
Our only tribute, Lord, reserved for Thee ! 

245 
Give us grace, O Saviour, 

To put off in might 
Deeds and dreams of darkness, 

For the robes of light ! 

246 
In Ocean's cave, still safe with Thee, 
The germ of immortality ; 
And calm and peaceful is my sleep, 
Rock'd in the cradle of the deep. 

247 
The Power that call'd thee into life has skill to make 

thee live, 
A place of refuge can provide, another being give ; 
Can clothe thy perishable form with beauty rich and 

rare, 
And, "when He takes his jewels up," grant thee a 

station there. 



Prize Selections. 75 

248 
Now Nature sinks in soft repose, 
A living semblance of the grave ; 
The dew steals noiseless on the rose, 
The boughs have almost ceased to wave ; 
The silent sky, the sleeping earth, 
Tree, mountain, stream, the humble sod, 
All tell from whom they had their birth, 
And cry, " Behold a God ! " 



249 
Fairer and purer for the vanished night — 

The long, lone wintry night when hope was o'er, 
And Love stood shivering by some open grave, 

And wrote upon its margin "Nevermore" ; 
Blind Love, who could not see beyond the mould 

And watch the new life quicken from decay, 
Who could not trust the Lord who rules the night 

To bring the blossoms of some fresh spring day % 

250 
I am not earth-born ; though I here delay ; 
Hope's child, I summon infiniter powers ; 
And laugh to see the mild and sunny day 
Smile on the shrunk and thin autumnal hours; 
I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me, 
If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea. 



j6 Prize Selections. 

May God, by whom are seen and heard 
Departing men and wandering bird, 
In mercy mark us for his own, 
And guide us to the land unknown. 

252 
God pity me ! 
I cannot see 

The end of pain. 
The flowers I know 

Bloom not in vain, 
Since Thou wilt care 
To find them fair : 
But Thou art — where? 

Faith falters so 
When love grows dim, 
And 'twas for him 

I bade them grow ! 

2 53 

Be merciful, O God ! 
Forgive the meanness of our human hearts, 
That never, till a noble soul departs, 
See half the worth, or hear the angel's wings 
Till they go rustling heavenward as he springs 

Up from the mounded sod. 



Prize Selections. JJ 

254 
Come, while the morning of thy life is glowing, 

Ere the dim phantoms thou art chasing die ; 
Ere the gay spell which earth is round thee throwing 

Fades, like the crimson from a sunset sky ; 
Life hath but shadows, save a promise given, 

Which lights the future with a fadeless ray ; 
O, touch the sceptre ! — win a hope in Heaven : 

Come, turn thy spirit from the world away ! 

2 55 
I would not live alway : I ask not to stay, 
Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way ? 
Where, seeking for rest, I but hover around, 
Like the patriarch's bird, and no resting is found ; 
Where Hope, when she paints her gay bow in the air, 
Leaves her brilliance to fade in the night of despair, 
And Joy's fleeting angel ne'er sheds a glad ray, 
Save the gloom of the plumage that bears him away. 

256 
While life's dark maze I tread, 
And griefs around me spread, 

Be Thou my guide ; 
Bid darkness turn to day, 
Wipe sorrow's tear away, 
Nor let me ever stray 

From Thee aside. 



yS Prize Selections. 

2 57 
We will not faint, if heavy burdens bind us, 

They press no harder than our souls can bear; 
The thorniest way is lying still behind us, 

We shall be braver for the past despair. 

258 
Long, long the Lord His counsel keeps, 

And long withholds His hand, 
While weary weeks and months go by, 

And sad-eyed watchers stand ; 
But not in vain their yearning gaze 

Deliverance awaits : 
The winds and waves obey His will — 

The ships are at the gates ! 

2 59 
For the dead and for the dying; 

For the dead that once were living, 
And the living that are dying, 

Pray I to the All-forgiving. 

260 
All love is lost but upon God alone. 

261 

Earth may be darkness ; 
Heaven will give the light. 



Prize Selections. 79 

262 
The Cross ! it takes our guilt away ; 

It holds the fainting spirit up ; 
It cheers with hope the gloomy day, 

And sweetens every bitter cup ; 
It makes the coward spirit brave, 

And nerves the feeble arm for fight ; 
It takes its terror from the grave, 

And gilds the bed of death with light. 

263 

By sorrow revealed as the stars are by night 

Far off a bright vision appears ; 
And Hope, like the rainbow — a creature of light, 

Is born, like the rainbow, in tears. 

264 
When lulled in passion's dream my senses slept, 

How did I act ? — e'en as a wayward child ; 
I smiled with pleasure when I should have wept, 

And wept with sorrow when I should have smiled. 

265 
Look up ! look up ! Ah, no ; the sod 
Thou walkest on is not more cold 
To all the love tales we have told 
In olden days. The weary road 
Thou still must travel, Bride of God ! 



8o Prize Selections. 

266 
Sceptre and Star divine, 
Who in Thine inmost shrine 
Has made us worshippers, O claim Thine own ; 
More than Thy seers we know — 
O teach our love to grow 
Up to Thy heavenly light, and reap what Thou hast 
sown. 

267 
And there are many ways to Heaven that lead : 

Woe to the " prophets," foul and false, who teach 
The narrow, cruel, cold, and selfish creed, 

That there are souls His voice can never reach. 
In tortuous, tangled paths we tread ; but trust 

One Guide to lead us forth and set us free ; 
Give us, Lord God All Mighty and All Just ! 

The Faith that is but Confidence in thee ! 

268 

O day of rest and gladness, 

O day of joy and light, 
O balm of care and sadness, 

Most beautiful, most bright ; 
On thee the high and lowly 

Through ages joined in tune, 
Sing, Holy, Holy, Holy 

To the great God Triune. 



Prize Selections. 81 

269 
How still the morning of the hallowed day ! 
Mute is the voice of rural labor, hushed 
The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song : 
The dizzy millwheel rests ; the anvil's din 
Hath ceased ; all, all around is quietness. 

270 
When men get loose in their theology 
The screws are started up in everything. 

271 

Two went to pray ? Oh, rather say, 
One went to brag, the other to pray. 
One stands up close, and treads on high, 
Where the other dares not lend his eye. 
One nearer to God's altar trod, 
The other to the altar's God. 

272 
Thou truest friend man ever knew, 

Thy constancy I've tried ; 
When all were false, I found thee true, 

My counsellor and guide. 
The mines of earth no treasures give 

That could this volume buy ; 
In teaching me the way to live, 

It taught me how to die. 



82 Prize Selections. 

2 73 

There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, 
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack. 

274 
Hope ! thou nurse of young desire. 

275 
And o'er them the lighthouse looked lovely as hope, 
That star of life's tremulous ocean. 

276 

Hope closed the grave, when He of Nazareth, 

Who led captivity his captive, came 

And vanquished the great conquerors, Time and Death, 

277 
Now that Hope lies sick to death 

Come and weep — 
None can stay her parting breath : 

Dark and deep 
Let her grave be — cool and quiet 
Under all the summer riot. 

278 

Arrested by dim questionings, 

Man cannot pierce the husk of things, 

Till Faith her clearer vision brings. 



Prize Selections. 83 

279 
Know then, whatever cheerful and serene 
Supports the mind supports the body too : 
Hence the most vital movement mortals feel 
Is hope, the balm and lifeblood of the soul. 

280 
Science was Faith once ; Faith were Science now, 
Would she but lay her bow and arrows by 
And arm her with the weapons of the time. 
Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from thought, 
For there's no virgin-fort but self-respect, 
And Truth defensive hath lost hold on God. 

281 
O Faith ! thou wonder-working principle — 
Eternal substance of our present hope, 
Thou evidence of things invisible ! 
What cannot man sustain, by thee sustained ! 

282 
O earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
O men with wailing in your voices ! 
O delved gold the wailers heap ! 
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God strikes a silence through you all, 
And giveth His beloved sleep. 






84 Prize Selections. 

283 
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, 
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, 
Relieve my languish, and restore the light, 
With dark forgetting of my care, return. 

284 
Sleep is a death : oh, make me try, 
By sleeping, what it is to die ! 
And as gently lay mine head 
On my grave, as now my bed. 
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me 
Awake again, at last, with Thee ; 
And, thus assured, behold, I lie 
Securely, or to wake or die. 

285 
Come gentle sleep, attend thy votary's prayer, 
And, tho' Death's image, to my couch repair : 
How sweet, tho' lifeless, yet with life to lie, 
And without dying, O, how sweet to die ! 

286 
Come sleep, O sleep ! the certain knot of peace, 

The baiting-place of v/it, the balm of woe ; 
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 

The indifferent judge between the high and low ! 



Prize Selections. 85 

287 

Come, gentle Sleep ! 
T3alm of my wounds and softener of my woes, 
A.nd lull my weary heart in sweet repose, 
&nd bid my sadden'd soul forget to weep, 

And close the tearful eye ; 

While dewy eve, with solemn sweep, 
Hath drawn her fleecy mantle o'er the sky, 
,\nd chased afar, adown the ethereal way, 
The din of bustling care and gaudy eye of day. 

288 
O sleep ! thy balm is to the troubled breast 
As time to sorrow. Gently dost thou take 
The arrows from the heart about to break, 
And with thy stealthy step and quiet eye, 
Around the couch in grateful ministry, 
Thy form as noiseless as the foot of love, 
Doth like the spirit of an angel move. 

289 
There are harps that complain to the presence of Night, 

To the presence of Night alone — 

In a near and unchangeable tone — 
Like winds, full of sound, that go whispering by, 
As if some immortal had stooped from the sky, 

And breathed out a blessing — and flown ! 



86 Prize Selections. 

290 

Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew 
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, 
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, 

This glorious canopy of light and blue ? 

291 
Ave Maria ! 'tis the hour of love, 

The kiss of rapture, and the linked embrace, 
The hallowed converse in the dim, still grove, 

The elysium of a heart-revealing face, 
When all is beautiful — for we are blest ; 

When all is lovely — for we are beloved ; 
When all is silent — for our passions rest ; 

When all is faithful — for our hopes are proved. 

292 
How lovely are the portals of the night, 

When stars come out to watch the daylight die. 

293 
Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven, first-born. 

294 
The poetry of earth is never dead. 

29S 
Health that snuffs the morning air. 



Prize Selections. 8y 

296 
World ! if to thee, sin-stained, such lavish charms are 

given, 
How can a human thought conceive the spirit joys of 

heaven ! 

297 

Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again ! . . . 

Again ! O sacred forms, how proud you look ! 

How high you lift your heads into the sky ! 

How huge you are, how mighty and how free ! 

298 
God of the world ! the hour must come, 

And nature's self to dust return ; 
Her crumbling altars must decay ; 

Here incense fires shall cease to burn; 
But still her grand and lovely scenes 

Have made man's warmest praises flow ; 
For hearts grow holier as they trace 

The beauty of the world below. - 

299 
The woods, so strangely solemn and majestic, 
The awful noon-tide twilight 'neath grand trees, 
The hush like that of holy haunts monastic, 
While mighty branches, lifting with the breeze, 
Give glimpses of high heaven's cerulean sheen, 
The Autumn-tinted leaves and boughs between. 



88 Prize Selections, 

300 
The heart of Nature soothes the heart of man, 

If with his heart he looks into her eyes. 

A place of leaves, wide air, and sunny skies, 
Will soothe him more than even woman can. 
We cry, and Nature answers us in time ; 

With both hands gives us what we ask and prize ; 

A lily pure and pale to glad our eyes, 
A spotted toad from out the ooze and slime. 

301 
Oh, this is life ! only to lie and dream, 

To feel the sunshine creep into the blood 
And warm the heart, like healing balm ; to seem 
A part of all we see, — earth, air, and flood, — 
While thoughts, unfettered, pass unheeded by 

As the wild flowers plucked, and then, in careless 
mood, 
Dropped from the loosened hand, forgotten lie. 

302 
Great Nature holds no fellowship with grief. 
Think not the wind is sighing through the sheaf 
For sorrow that the summer's race is run ; 
Think not the falling rain and shrouded sun, 
Or the white scourge of frost laid on the ground, 
Are tokens that her pleasures are discrowned 
From their brave empires in the earth and sky. 



Prize Selections. 89 

3°3 
Nature is poet for herself, 

And writes her epics everywhere ; 
Each tiny leaf and soft wind stirs, 

Each bird-song heard on forest ways, 
The sea's deep melodies are hers, 

And storm and silence sing her praise. 

3°4 

Green grows the laurel on the bank, 

Dark waves the pine upon the hill, 
Green hangs the lichen, cold and dank, 

Dark springs the heart-ease by the rill, 
Age-mosses clamber ever bright, 

Pale is the water-lily's bloom : 
Thus Life still courts the shades of night, 

And beauty hovers o'er the tomb. 

305 
I am the child of earth and air and sea ! 
My lullaby by hoarse Silurian storms 
Was chanted ; and, through endless changing forms 
Of plant and bird and beast, unceasingly 
The toiling ages wrought to fashion me. 
Lo, the large ancestors have left a breath 
Of their strong souls in mine, defying death 
And change. 



9° Prize Selections. 

306 
How like a tender mother, 

With loving thoughts beguiled, 
Fond Nature seems to lull to rest 

Each faint and weary child ! 
Drawing the curtain tenderly, 

Affectionate and mild. 



3<>7 
O'er all the land a vision rare and splendid — 

(What time the Summer her last glory yields ! ) 
I saw the reapers by tall wains attended, 

Wave their keen scythes across the ripened fields, 
At each broad sweep the glittering grain-stalks parted, 

With all their sunniest lustres earthward bowed ; 
But still those tireless blade-curves flashed and darted. 

Like silvery lightnings from a golden cloud. 

308 
Talk not of temples — there is one 

Built without hands, to mankind given ; 
Its lamps are the meridian sun, 

And all the stars of heaven ; 
Its walls are the cerulean sky ; 

Its floors the earth so green and fair ; 
The dome its vast immensity — 

All Nature worships there ! 







Prize Selections. 91 

309 

Can he prize the tainted posies, 
Which on every breast are worn ; 

That may pluck the virgin roses 
From their never-touched thorn ? 

310 

Long-rolling surges of a falling sea, 
Smiting the sheer cliffs of an unknown shore ; 
And by a fanged rock, swaying helplessly 
A mast with broken cordage — nothing more. 

3 11 

To thee the love of woman hath gone down, 
Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head, 
O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown ; 
— Yet must thou hear a voice — Restore the Dead ! 
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee ! — 
Restore the Dead, thou Sea ! 

312 

Our boat is small and the tempest raves, 
And naught is heard but the lashing waves 
And the sullen roar of the angry sea 
And the wild winds piping drearily ; 
Yet sea and tempest rise in vain, 
We'll bless our blazing hearths again. 



92 Prize Selections. 

3*3 

The Thames nocturne in blue and gold 
Changed to a harmony in gray : 
A barge with ochre-colored hay 

Dropt from the wharf ; and chill and cold 

The yellow fog came creeping down 
The bridges, till the houses' walls 
Seemed changed to shadows, and St. Paul's 

Loomed like a bubble o'er the town. 

I have sinuous shells of pearly hue 

Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 

In the Sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked 

His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave : 

Shake one and it awakens, then apply 

Its polished lips to your attentive ear, 

And it remembers its august abodes, 

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 

31S 
To-day the Spring is in the air 
And in the blood : sweet sun-gleams come and go 
Upon the hills, in lanes the wild-flowers blow, 
And tender leaves are bursting everywhere. 
About the hedge the small birds peer and dart, 
Each bush is full of amorous flutterings 
And little rapturous cries. 



Prize Selections. 93 

316 

Shell of the bright sea-waves, 
What is it that we hear in thy sad moan ? 
Is this unceasing music all thine own, 

Lute of the ocean-caves ? 

Or does some spirit dwell 
In the deep windings of thy chambers dim, 
Breathing for ever, in its mournful hymn, 

Of ocean's anthem-swell ? 



3i7 

Roll on, in thy beautiful being, 
Glad ocean, with music afar; 

Life bears me to meet the Allseeing, 
Where all the beatified are, 
With space at my feet like a star. 



318 

Yes ! but the waves seem ever 

Singing the same sad thing; 
And vain is my weak endeavor, 

To guess what the surges sing ! 
What is that voice repeating, 

Ever by night and day ? 
Is it a friendly greeting, 

Or a warning that calls away ? 



94 Prize Selections. 

319 

I palpitate with fitful love ; 

I sigh and sing with changing breath ; 
I raise my hands to heaven above, 

I smite my shores beneath ! 
In vain, in vain ! while far and fine, 

To curb the madness of my sweep, 
Runs the white limit of a line 

I may not overleap. 

320 

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shim- 
mering band 

Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to 
the folds of the land. 

Inward and outward to northward and southward the 
beach-lines linger and curl 

As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows 
the firm sweet limbs of a girl. 

Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, 

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray loop- 
ing of light. 

321 

O for the strength to paint my joy once more ! 
That joy I feel when Winter's reign is o'er; 
When the dark despot lifts his hoary brow, 
And seeks his polar realm's eternal snow. 



Prize Selections. 95 

322 
By sculptured cave, and speaking river, 

Thee, Daedalus, oft the nymphs recall ; 
The leaves, with a sound of winter, quiver, 

Murmur thy name, and murmuring fall. 
Ever thy phantoms arise before us, 

Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
By bed and table they lord it o'er us, 

With looks of beauty and words of good. 



323 
To-day is here ; — come, crown to-day 

With Spring's delight or Spring's despair ! 
Love cannot bide old Time's delay — 
Down my glad gardens light winds play, 
And my whole life shall bloom and bear 

To-day. 

3 2 4 

Starred forget-me-nots smile sweetly, 

Ring, blue-bells; ring ! 
Winning eye and heart completely, 

Sing, robin, sing ! 
All among the reeds and rushes, 
Where the brook its music hushes, 
Bright the calopogon blushes, — 

Laugh, O murmuring Spring ! 



II 



g6 Prize Selections. 

325 
I have heard the mavis singing 

Its love-song to the morn ; 
I've seen the dew-drop clinging 

To the rose just newly born. 

326 

Gone were but the winter cold, 

And gone were but the snow, 
I could sleep in the wild woods 

Where primroses blow. 

327- 
" I have seen the first robin of spring, mother dear, 
And have heard the brown darling sing ; 
You said, ' Hear it and wish, and 'twill surely come 

true ' ; 
So I've wished such a beautiful thing ! " 

328 
Ah ! my heart is weary waiting, 

Waiting for the May : 
Waiting for the pleasant rambles 
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles, 
With the woodbine alternating, 

Scent the dewy way : 
Ah ! my heart is weary waiting, 

Waiting, for the May. 



Prize Selections. 97 

329 

I in these flowery meads would be, 

These crystal streams should solace me ; 

To whose harmonious bubbling noise 

I, with my angle, would rejoice, 
Sit here and see the turtle-dove 
Court his chaste mate to acts of love. 



33° 

Sing, sweet thrushes, forth and sing ! 

Meet the morn upon the lea ; 
Are the emeralds of the spring 

On the angler's trysting-tree ? 

Tell, sweet thrushes, tell to me ! 

Are there buds on your willow tree ? 

Buds and birds on your trysting-tree ? 



33* 

Now do tawny bees along, 

Plundering sweets from blossoms, hum ; 
Now do showers of joyous song 

Down from larks up-mounting, come ; 
Everything 
Now doth sing, 
Welcome gladness, welcome Spring. 



98 Prize Selections. 

332 

Were I a poet I should sing 
June's radiance of blossoming. 
Were I a queen a crown I'd wear 
Of her red roses on my hair. 
I'm but a woman, and to me 
June is the memory, Love, of thee. 



333 
Hail, blushing goddess, beauteous Spring ! 
Who, in thy jocund train, dost bring 
Loves and graces, smiling hours, 
Balmy breezes, fragrant flowers ; 
Come, with tints of roseate hue, 
Nature's faded charms renew. 



334 

As it fell upon a day 
In the merry month of May, 
Sitting in a pleasant shade 
Which a grove of myrtles made, 
Beasts did leap and birds did sing, 
Trees did grow and plants did spring, 
Everything did banish moan 
Save the nightingale alone. 



Prize Selections. 99 

335 

Ah, come and woo the Spring ; 

List to the birds that sing ; 
Pluck the primroses ; pluck the violets ; 

Pluck the daisies, 

Sing their praises ; 
Friendship with the flowers some noble thought begets. 



336 

Loud is the Summer's busy song, 
The smallest breeze can find a tongue, 
While insects of each tiny size 
Grow teasing with their melodies, 
Till noon burns with its blistering breath 
Around, and day lies still as death. 



337 
September strews the woodland o'er 

With many a brilliant color; 
The world is brighter than before — 

Why should our hearts be duller ? 
Sorrow and the scarlet leaf, 

Sad thoughts and sunny weather, 
Ah, me ! this glory and this grief 

Agree not well together. 



ioo Prize Selections. 

33* 
Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove ! 

Thou messenger of Spring ! 
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, 

And woods thy welcome sing. 



339 
The Wind moans in the Wood, 

The leaf drops from the Tree ; 
The cold Rain falls on the graves of the Good, 

The cold Mist comes up from the Sea. 



34o 

Thrice happy time, 
Best portion of the various year, in which 
Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works. 
Lovely, to full perfection wrought ! 



34i 
I hear a voice low in the sunset woods : 

Listen ; it says " Decay, decay, decay : " 
I hear it in the murmur of the floods, 

And the wind sighs it as it flies away. 



Prize Selections. 101 

342 

The dead leaves their rich mosaics, 

Of olive and gold and brown, 
Had laid on the rain-wet pavements, 

Through all the embowered town. 

343 

Death in the wood, — 
Death, and a scent of decay ; 

Death, and a horror that creeps with the blood, 
And stiffens the limbs to clay ; 

For the rains are heavy and slow, 
And the leaves are shrunken and wan, 

And the winds are sobbing weary and low, 
And the life of the year is gone. 

344 
The time of Frost is the time for me 
When the gay blood spins through the heart with glee, 
When the voice leaps out with a chiming sound, 
And the footstep rings on the musical ground ; 
When the earth is white, and the air is bright, 
And every breath a new delight. 

345 
Gentle shepherd, tell me where. 



102 Prize Selections. 

346 

Still dear to each bosom the blue-bird shall be ; 

His voice, like the thrillings of hope, is a treasure ; 
For, through bleakest storms if a calm he but see, 

He comes to remind us of sunshine and pleasure ! 

347 
Bird of the wilderness, 
Blithesome and cumberless, 
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea ! 
Emblem of happiness, 
Blest is thy dwelling-place — 

to abide in the desert with thee ! 

348 
The corn, oh, the corn, and the yellow, mellow corn ! 

Thanks for the corn with our bread upon the board! 
So shall we acknowledge it before we reap the morn, 
With our hands to heaven, and our knees unto the 
Lord. 

349 
Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere ; 
By the dusty roadside, 
On the sunny hillside, 
Close by the noisy brook, 
In every shady nook, 

1 come creeping, creeping everywhere. 



Prise Selections. 103 

35° 
A song for the plant of my own native West, 

Where nature and freedom reside, 
By plenty still crowned, and by peace ever blest, 

To the corn, the green corn of her pride ! 
In climes of the East has the olive been sung, 

And the grape been the theme of their lays, 
But for thee shall a harp of the backwoods be strung, 

Thou bright, ever beautiful maize ! 

3S 1 

Sweet letters of the angel tongue, 

I've loved you long and well, 
And never have failed in your fragrance sweet 

To find some secret spell, — 
A charm that has bound me with witching power, 

For mine is the old belief 
That, midst your sweets and midst your bloom, 

There's a soul in every leaf ! 

3S 2 

Beautiful children of the woods and fields ! 

That bloom by mountain streamlets 'mid the heather, 
Or into clusters, 'neath the hazels, gather ; 

Or where by hoary rocks you make your bields, 

And sweetly flourish on through summer weather :— • 

I love you all ! 



104 Prize Selections. 

353 

All brilliant flowers are pale and dead 

And sadly droop to earth, 
While pansies chill in velvet robes* 

Count life but little worth ; 
But in these dark November days 

That wander wild and wet, 
Our thoughts are winged to summer hours 

On breath of mignonette. 



354 
O Venus' myrtles, fresh and green ! 

O Cupid's blushing roses ! 
Not on your classic flowers alone 

The sacred light reposes. 
Though gentle care may shield your buds, 

From north winds rude and blasting, 
As dear to Love, those few, pale flowers, 

Oh, white life-everlasting ! 



355 
Those few pale Autumn flowers, 

How beautiful they are ! 
Than all that went before, 
Than all the Summer store, 

How lovelier far ! 



Prize Selections. 105 

356 

Fair child of art ! thy charms decay, 

Touched by the withered hand of Time ; 
And hushed the music of that day, 
When my voice mingled with the streamlet's chime : 
But on my heart thy cheek of bloom 

Shall live when Nature's smile has fled \ 
And, rich with memory's sweet perfume, 
Shall o'er her grave thy tribute incense shed. 

357 
The rose has one powerful virtue to boast, 

Above all the flowers of the field ; 
When its leaves are all dead, and its fine colors lost, 

Still how sweet a perfume it will yield ! 

358 

Lily of lilies, with star-lighted eye, 

Come to my garden and give it new bloom ; 
Goodly the company you will find there — 
There in love's spaces of limitless room : 
Red roses magical 
White roses tragical, 
Roses auroral, soft blushing and shy ; 
Bloom of resplendent light, 
Bloom of transcendent white — 
Such is the company you will find there ; 
Yet, none as yourself so deliciously fair. 



io6 



Prize Selections. 



359 
The roses fauld their silken leaves, 

The foxglove shuts its bell ; 
The honeysuckle and the birk 

Spread fragrance through the dell. 
Let others crowd the giddy court 

Of mirth and revelry, 
The simple joys that Nature yields 

Are dearer far to me. 

360 
Autumn : wheezy, sneezy, freezy ; 
Winter : slippy, drippy, nippy ; 
Spring: showery, flowery, bowery; 
Summer : hoppy, croppy, poppy. 

361 

Your voiceless lips, O flowers, are living preachers, 
Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book, 

Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers 
From loneliest nook. 



362 

My name is Norval ; on the Grampian hills 
My father feeds his flocks ; a frugal swain 
Whose constant cares were to increase his store, 
And keep his only son, myself, at home. 



Prize Selections. 107 

363 
From my pulpit of the sod, 

Like a god, 
\ proclaim the wondrous truth : 
Farthest age is nearest youth, 
Nearest Glory's natal porch, 
Where, with pale, inverted torch, 
Death lights downward to the rest 

Of the blest. 

364 
" He loved the lilies ; He made them fair ; 

And sweet as the sweetest incense flows 
The stream of its fragrance when I wear 

For Him, on my heart, a rose. 
And, father, I doubt not, there may hide 

Beneath the tatters thou bid'st me view 
As much of arrogance, scorn, and pride 

As ever the ermine knew ! " 

365 

If to trace a hidden sorrow were within the doctor's art, 
They ha' found a mortgage lying on that woman's 

broken heart. 
Worm or beetle, drouth or tempest, on a farmer's land 

may fall, 
But for first-class ruination trust a mortgage 'gainst 

them all. 






108 Prize Selections. 

366 
There's freedom in the farmer's life, 

Not found in gilded rank or station ; 
The mission of the farmer's wife, 

Is in the home and for the nation ; 
Their homestead is a kingdom grand ; 

Where love bears sceptre, life is duty, 
And heaven will bless that happy land 

Whose homes are thrones of love and beauty. 

367 
There's high and low, there's rich and poor, 

There's trades and crafts enow, man, 
But east and west, his trade's the best 

That kens to guide the plough, man. 
Then come well speed, my ploughman lad, 

And hey my merry ploughman ; 
Of all the trades that I do ken, 

Command me to the ploughman. 

368 
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the 

Lord ; 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of 

wrath are stored; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible 

swift sword ; 
His truth is marching on. 



Prize Selections. 109 

Men do not reap in the spring, my dear, nor are grana- 
ries filled in May, 

Save it be with the harvest of former year, stored up 
for a rainy day. 

The seasons will keep their own true time, you can 
hurry nor furrow nor sod : 

It's honest labor and steadfast thrift that alone are 
blest by God. 

37° 
O Christmas, Merry Christmas ! 

Is it really come again, 
With its memories and greetings, 

With its joy and with its pain ? 
There's a minor in the carol, 

And a shadow in the light, 
And a spray of cypress twining 

With the holly wreath to-night. 

37i 
My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, — 

Of thee I sing : 
Land where my fathers died 
Land of the Pilgrim's pride, 
From every mountain-side 

Let freedom ring. 



no Prize Selections. 

372 

Oh, loved ones of the long ago, 

Whose memories hang in golden frames, 
Resting beneath the maple's glow, 

Where few e'er read your chiseled names, 
Come back, as in that Christmas night, 

And fill the vacant chairs of mirth ! 
Ah me ! the dream is all too bright, 

And ashes lie upon the hearth. 

373 
Close up the ledger, Time ! 

Hark the knell of the year gone by ! 
Have I run out my golden sand ? 

Where shall I be when the next shall die ? 
Where shall the soul within me stand ? 

Naught beyond but guilt and crime ? 
Listen ! I hear the New Year's bell ! 

Shut up the ledger, Time ! 

374 
Ye sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought 

For those rights which unstained from your sires 
had descended, 
May you long taste the blessings your valor has 
bought, 
And your sons reap the soil which their fathers de- 
fended. 



Prize Selections. in 

375 
As when within some mighty battle-plain 
The king is fallen and all his army knows, 
One common thrill goes through the myriad heart, 
For there he lies, breathing last breath away, 
So dear, so dear to all he seems to lean 
His dying head on every soldier's breast : 
So the Year dies, so, dying, seems to leave 
His fallen head upon the heart of all. 

376 

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 

The queen of the world and the child of the skies ; 

Thy genius commands thee ; with rapture behold, 

While ages on ages thy splendors unfold. 

Thy reign is the last and the noblest of time ; 

Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime ; 

Let the crimes of the east ne'er en crimson thy name ; 

Be freedom and science and virtue thy fame. 

377 
When Freedom from her mountain height 

Unfurl'd her standard to the air, 
She tore the azure robe of night, 

And set the stars of glory there. 

378 
Every kingdom hath a grave. 



1 1 2 Prize Selections. 

379 

The star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

380 
Who rules o'er freeman should himself be free. 

381 

O, know ye the wish of the true, the true ? 
O, know ye the wish of the true ? 

'Tis to see the slave's hand 

Whirling liberty's brand, 
As its toil-nurtured muscles could do, 
And the wide-world's oppressors in view : 
God ripen the wish of the true ! 

382 
Thy spirit, Independence, let me share, 
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye, 
Thy steps I follow with bosom bare, 
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky. 

3%3 
Oh, band in the pine-wood, cease ! 

Cease with your splendid call ; 
The living are brave and noble, 

But the dead were bravest of all ! 



Prize Selections. 1 1 3 

I loathe ye in my bosom, 

I scorn ye with mine eye, 
And I'll taunt ye with my latest breath, 

And fight ye till I die ! 
I ne'er will ask ye quarter, 

And I ne'er will be your slave ; 
But I'll swim the sea of slaughter 

Till I sink beneath its wave ! 

38s 

Freedom calls you ! Quick, be ready ; 
Think of what your sires have been ; 
Onward, onward ! strong and steady, 
Drive the tyrant to his den ; 

On, and let the watchwords be, 

Country, home, and liberty ! 

386 

Drop we a tear o'er the early bier, 

In token of our sorrow, 
While the army bleeds, that the hands she needs 

Must idle be to-morrow. 
But the bugle call and the battle ball 

Again shall rouse him never : 
He fought and fell, he served us well ; 

His furlough lasts forever. 






£14 Prize Selections. 

387 
Slowly and sadly we laid him down, 

From the field of his fame fresh and gory ; 
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone ■ 

But we left him alone with his glory. 

388 
How sleep the brave, who sink to rest 
By all their country's wishes blest ! 
When spring, with dewy fingers cold, 
Returns to deck their hallow'd mould, 
She there shall dress a sweeter sod 
Than fancy's feet have ever trod. 

389 

•To drum-beat and heart-beat 

A soldier marches by ; 
There is color in his cheek, 

There is courage in his eye ; 
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat 

In a moment he must die. 

39° 

Stop, angels, hither from the skies; 

There is no holier spot of ground 
Than where defeated valor lies, 

By mourning beauty crowned. 



Prize Selections. 1 1 5 

39 1 

Give honor to their memories who left the pleasant 
strand, 

To shed their blood so freely for love of father-land — 

Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy church- 
yard grave 

So freely, for a restless bed amid the tossing wave. 

39 2 
Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone 

In deathless song shall tell, 
When many a vanished year hath flown, 

The story how ye fell ; 
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, 

Nor Time's remorseless doom, 
Shall dim one ray of holy light 

That gilds your glorious tomb. 

393 
The maid who binds her warrior's sash, 

With smile that well her pain dissembles, 
The while beneath her drooping lash 

One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles, 
Though Heaven alone records the tear, 

And fame shall never know the story, 
Her heart has shed a drop as dear 

As e'er bedewed the field of glory. 












1 1 6 Prize Selections. 

394 

'Tis not a wild chorus of praises, 

Nor chance, nor yet fate ; 
? Tis the greatness born with him and in him, 

That makes the man great. 

395 

Close his eyes, his work is done ; 

What to him is friend or foeman, 
Rise of moon or set of sun, 

Hand of man or kiss of woman ? 
Lay him low, lay him low, 
In the clover or the snow. 
What cares he ? — he cannot know ; 
Lay him low. 

39 6 

The ways of violence are hard to reckon, 
And men of right grow feeble in their will, 

And Virtue of her sons has been forsaken, 
And men of peace have turned aside to kill. 

397 
Now there's peace on the shore, now there's calm un 

the sea, 
Fill a glass to the heroes whose swords kept us free, 
Right descendant of Wallace, Montrose, and Dundee. 



Prize Selections. 117 

398 
The land is holy where they fought, 

And holy where they fell ; 
For by their blood that land was bought — 

The land they loved so well. 
Then glory to that valiant band, 
The honored saviors of the land ! 



399 
Now Roman is to Roman 

More hateful than a foe, 
And the tribunes beard the high, 

And the fathers grind the low. 
As we wax hot in faction 

In battle we wax cold ; 
Wherefore men fight not as they fought 

In the brave days of old. 



400 
Scion of a mighty stock ! 
Hands of iron — hearts of oak — 
Follow with unflinching tread 
Where the noble fathers led. 
Craft and subtle treachery, 
Gallant youth ! are not for thee : 
Follow thou in word and deeds 
Where the God within thee leads. 









1 1 8 Prize Selections. 

401 
Strike ! and when the fight is over, 

If ye look in vain for me, 
Where the dead are lying thickest 

Search for him that was Dundee. 



402 
O Liberty! thou sacred name 

Whate'er reproach may thee befall, 
From judgment just or spiteful blame, 

To thee I cling, on thee I call. 

And yet thou art not all in all ; 
And e'en, where thou art worshipped less, 

In spite of check, in spite of thrall, 
Content may spring and happiness. 



403 
Though ages long have pass'd 

Since our fathers left their home, 
Their pilot in the blast 

O'er untravell'd seas to roam, 
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins! 
And shall we not proclaim 
That blood of honest fame 
Which no tyranny can tame 

By its chains ? 



Prize Selections. 119 

404 
Oh, what have I done, — a weak woman, in what have 

I meddled with harm ! 
Troubling only my God for the sunshine and rain on 

my rough little farm, — 
That my ploughshares are beaten to swords, and 

whetted before my eyes, 
That my tears must cleanse a foul nation, my lamb be 

a sacrifice ? 

* 

405 
I saw him on the battle-eve, 

When like a king he bore him, — 
Proud hosts in glittering helm and greave, 

And prouder chiefs before him ; 
The warrior, and the warrior's deeds, 
The morrow, and the morrow's meeds, 

No daunting thoughts came o'er him ; 
He looked around him and his eye 
Defiance flashed to earth and sky. 

406 

No more words ; 

Try it with your swords ! 
Try it with the arms of your bravest and your best f 
You are proud of your manhood, now put it to the test ; 

Not another word ; 

Try it by the sword ! 






120 Prize Selections. 

407 
I gave my soldier-boy a blade ; 

In fair Damascus fashioned well : 
Who first the glittering falchion swayed, 

Who first beneath its fury fell, 
I know not, but I hope to know 

That for no mean or hireling trade, 
To guard no feeling base or low, 

I gave my soldier-boy a blade. 



408 
Oh, Ireland, my country, the hour 

Of thy pride and thy splendor hath passed, 
And the chain that was spurned in thy moments of 
power 

Hangs heavy around thee at last. 
There are marks in the fate of each clime, 

There are times in the fortunes of men, 
But the changes of realms and the chances of time 

Shall never restore thee again. 



409 

" Our fathers," says he, " that their sons might be free, 
Left their King on his throne and came over the sea ; 
And that man is a knave or a fool who, to save 
His life, for a minute would live like a slave." 



Prize Selections. 12 1 

410 

They planted them together — our gallant sires of 

old — 
Though one was crowned with crystal snow, and one 

with solar gold. 
They planted them together, — on the world's majestic 

height ; 
At Saratoga's deathless charge ; at Eutaw's stubborn 

fight. 

411 

A light is out in Italy, 

A golden tongue of purest flame. . 
We watched it burning, long and lone 

And every watcher knew its name, 

And knew from whence its fervor came : 
That one rare light of Italy, 

Which put self-seeking souls to shame ! 

412 

Our past is bright and grand 

On the purpling tints of time, 
And the present of our land 

Points to glories more sublime. 
For our destiny is won, 

And 'tis ours to lead the van 
Of the nations marching on, 

Of the moving hosts of Man. 







122 Prize Selections. 

4i3 
We look'd upon that banner, 

And the memory arose 
Of our homes and perish'd kindred 

Where the Lee or Shannon flows ; 
We look'd upon that banner, 

And we swore to God on high, 
To smite to-day the Saxon's might — 

To conquer or to die. 

414 
High over all whom might or mind made great, 

Yielding the conqueror's crown to harder hearts, 

Exalted not by politician's arts, 
Yet with a will to meet and master fate, 
And skill to rule a young, divided State ; 

Greater by what was not than what was done — 

Alone on History's height stands Washington. 

415 
Tears, love, and honor he shall have, 
Through ages keeping green his grave. 
Too late approved, too early lost,, 
His story is the people's boast. 
Tough-sinewed offspring of the soil, 
Of peasant lineage, reared to toil, 
In Europe he had been a thing 
To the glebe tethered — here a king. 



Prize Selections. 123 

416 
Into the Devil tavern 

Three booted troopers strode, 
From spur to feather spotted and splashed 

With the mud of a winter road. 
In each of their cups they dropped a crust, 

And stared at the guests with a frown ; 
Then drew their swords, and roared for a toast, 

" God send this Crum — well — down ! " 

417 
A mother's hopes, a mother's fears, 
A school-boy's triumphs and his tears, 
A dear girl's love, a stolen kiss, 
A mutual vow for good or ill, 
A year or more of wedded bliss, 
A new-made grave beyond the hill. 

418 
I have got a new-born sister ; 
I was nigh the first that kissed her. 
When the nursing-woman brought her 
To papa, his infant daughter, 
How papa's dear eyes did glisten ! — 
She will shortly be to christen ; 
And papa has made the offer, 
I shall have the naming of her. 






124 Prize Selections. 

419 
Only a tender flower 

Sent us to rear ; 
Only a life to love 

While we are here ; 
Only a baby small, 

Never at rest ; 
Small, but how dear to us, 

God knoweth best. 



420 
I'm in love with you, Baby Louise ! 
With your silken hair and your soft blue eyes, 
And the dreamy wisdom that in them lies, 
And the faint, sweet smile you brought from the skies; 
God's sunshine, Baby Louise ! 



421 
If by any device or knowledge 

The rose-bud its beauty could know, 
It would stay a rose-bud forever, 

Nor into its fulness grow. 
And if thou could'st know thy own sweetness, 

O little one, perfect and sweet, 
Thou would'st be a child forever, 

Completer while incomplete. 



Prize Selections. 125 

422 
When the lessons and tasks are all ended, 

And the school for the day is dismissed, 
The little ones gather around me, 

To bid me good-night and be kissed ; 
Oh, the little white arms that encircle 

My neck in their tender embrace ! 
Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven, 

Shedding sunshine of love on my face ! 

423 

When thou, in all thy loveliness, 

Sweet Rosalie, wert mine, 
Of Earth's one more, of Heaven's one less, 

I counted things divine. 
But since the lilies o'er thy breast 

Out of the sweetness spring, 
Of love's delight I miss the rest 

And keep alone the sting. 

424 

Gem of our hearth, our household pride, 

Earth's undefiled, 
Could love have saved, thou hadst not died, 

Our dear, sweet child ! 
Humbly we bow to Fate's decree ; 
Yet had we hoped that Time should see 
Thee mourn for us, not us for thee. 









126 Prize Selections. 

425 
Her face was like an April morn, 

Clad in a wintry cloud ; 
And clay-cold was her lily hand, 

That held her sable shroud. 
So shall the fairest face appear, 

When youth and years are flown : 
Such is the robe that kings must wear> 

When death has reft their crown. 

426 
She died in beauty ! like a rose 

Blown from its parent stem ; 
She died in beauty ! like a pearl 

Dropped from some diadem. 
She died in beauty ! like a lay 

Along a moonlit lake ; 
She died in beauty ! like the song 

Of birds amid the brake. 



427 

I cannot make him dead ! 

His fair sunshiny head 
Is ever bounding round my study chair; 

Yet, when my eyes now dim 

With tears, I turn to him, 
The vision vanishes, — he is not there ! 



Prize Selections. 127 

428 

In this dim world of clouding cares, 
We rarely know, till wildered eyes 
See white wings lessening up the skies, 

The angels with us unawares. 

429 

The baby wept ; 
The mother took it from the nurse's arms, 
And soothed its griefs, and stilled its vain alarms, 

And baby slept. 

Again it weeps, 
And God doth take it from the mother's arms, 
From present pain and future unknown harms, 

And baby sleeps. 

43o 
Thou raisest to me no filial stone, 

No parent's grave with tears beholdest ; 
Thou art my ancestor, my son, 

And standest in heaven's account the oldest. 



43i 

No soul at last is truly great 

That was not greatly true at first ; 

In childhood's play are seeds of fate, 

Whose flower in manhood's work shall burst. 



ft 



128 Prize Selections. 

43 2 
O Earth ! in vain our aching eyes 

Stretch over thy green plain ! 
Too harsh thy dews, too gross thine air, 

Her spirit to sustain ; 
But up in groves of Paradise 

Full surely we shall see 
Our morning-glory beautiful 

Twine round our dear Lord's knee. 



433 
By trifles, in our common ways, 

Our characters are slowly piled ; 
We lose not all our yesterdays ; 

The man has something of the child : 
Part of the Past to all the Present cleaves, 
As the rose odors linger in the fading leaves. 

434 
There's hope for every woe, 

And a balm for every pain, 
But the first joys o' our heart 

Come never back again. 
There's a track upon the deep, 

And a path across the sea ; 
But the weary ne'er return 

To their ain countrie ! 



Prize Selections. 129 

435 
Two things are ever with us, youth and death — 
The faun that pipes, and Pluto unbeguiled ; 
From age to age still plays the eternal child, 
Nor heeds the eternal doom that followeth. 
Ah, precious days of unreflecting breath ! 



43 6 
The light of other days is faded, 

And all their glories past, 
For grief with heavy wing hath shaded 

The hopes too bright to last ; 
The world which morning's mantle clouded, 

Shines forth with purer rays, 
But the heart ne'er feels in sorrow shrouded, 

The light of other days. 



437 
The old days we remember, 
How softly did they glide, 
While all untouched by worldly care 
We wandered side by side ! 
In those pleasant days, when the sun's last rays , 

Just lingered on the hill, 
Or the moon's pale light with the coming night 
Shone o'er our pathway still. 



ill 



130 Prize Selections. 

438 
I've wandered east, I've wandered west, 

Through many a weary way ; 
But never, never can forget 

The love of life's young day. 

439 
Children are we, our airy bubbles blowing, 

Laughing, we see them lightly float away, 
Life's sterner side unheeding, or unknowing, 

We clutch at pleasure while 'tis called to-day. 
To-day, and yet to-day, and so time wingeth, 

And armour rusts the while, and hearts grow cold. 
The bubble's gone, e'en with the mirth it bringeth, 

Cheerless and lone, we wake to find us old. 

440 

Not so much nearer wisdom is a man than a boy, for- 
sooth, 

Though, in scorn of what has come and gone, he hates 
the ways of his youth. 

441 

Oh ! yet, ye dear, deluding visions, stay . 

Fond hopes, of innocence and fancy born ! 
For you I'll cast these waking thoughts away, 

For one wild dream of life's romantic morn. 



Prize Selections. 131 

442 

In youth there comes a west-wind 

Blowing our bloom away, — 
A chilly breath of Autumn 

Out of the lips of May. 
We bear the ripe fruit after, — 

Ah, me ! for the thought of pain ! «?— 
We know the sweetness and beauty 

And the heart-bloom never again. 

443 

There is a song of sorrow, 

The death-dirge of the gay, 
That tells, ere dawn of morrow, 

These charms may melt away --- 
That sun's bright beam be shaded, 

That sky be blue no more, 
The summer flowers be faded, 

And youth's warm promise o'er. 

444 

We will not deplore them, the days that are past; 
The gloom of misfortune is over them cast ; 
They are lengthened by sorrow and sullied by care ; 
Their griefs were too many, their joys were too rare ; 
Yet now that their shadows are on us no more, 
Let us welcome the prospect that brightens before ! 



n 



132 Prize Selections. 

445 
'Tis but the joyous quality 
Of life, that pricks his heart with glee. 
So blithe, so rash, he cannot guess 
What burdens gather to oppress, 
What world-old wrestlers, staunch and grim, 
Sit by the wayside waiting him ; 
Whose savage grapple without ruth, 
Unlocks the tender joints of youth. 

446 
Down the smooth stream of life the stripling darts, 
Gay as the morn : bright glows the vernal sky, 
Hope swells the sails, and passion steers his course. 
Safe glides his little bark along the shore, 
Where virtue takes her stand : but if too far 
He launches forth beyond discretion's mark, 
Sudden the tempest scowls, the surges roar, 
Blot his fair day, and plunge him in the deep. 

447 
Let the curtain come down. Let the scene pass 

away — 
There's an autumn when summer has squander'd her 

day : 
We sit by the fire when we can't by the lamp, 
And re-people the banquet, re-soldier the camp. 
O, nothing can rob us of memory's gold. 



Prize Selections. 133 

448 
Why are we captive, such as I, 

Mature in age and strong in will, 
To one who harps so plaintively ? 

I struck at him : why lives he still ? 
Why lives he still ? Because the ruth 

Of those pure days may never die. 
He lives because his name is Youth, 

Because his harp is Memory. 

449 
Days of my youth, ye have glided away ; 
Hairs of my youth, ye are frosted and gray ; 
Eyes of my youth, your keen sight is no more ; 
Cheeks of my youth, ye are furrowed all o'er ; 
Strength of my youth, all your vigor is gone ; 
Thoughts of my youth, your gay visions are flown, 

45° 
I came at morn — 'twas spring, I smiled,. 

The fields with green were clad ; 
I walked abroad at noon, — and lo ! 

'Twas summer, — I w r as glad ; 
I sat me down ; 'twas autumn eve, 

And I with sadness wept ; 
I laid me down at night, and then 

'Twas winter, — and I slept. 



I 

134 Prize Selections, 

1 1 45i 

When time has passed, and seasons fled, 
Your hearts will feel like'inine, 

And aye the song will maist delight 
That minds ye o' lang syne. 

45 2 
There are gains for all our losses, 

There are balms for all our pain ; 
But when youth, the dream, departs, 
It takes something from our hearts, 

And it never comes again. 

453 
Droppeth now from off my head 

A silver hair : 
Plainer preacher never said — 

" For death prepare ! " 

FilPd with gloom 
We follow Time with solemn tread 

To the tomb. 

454 
Youth longs and Manhood strives; but Age remem- 
bers ; 
Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past ; 
Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers 
That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. 



Prize Selections. 135 

45 S 
The tree of deepest root is found 
Least willing still to quit the ground ; 
? Twas therefore said, by ancient sages, 

That love of life increased with years 
So much, that in our latter stages, 
When pains grow sharp, and sickness rages, 

The greatest love of life appears. 

456 
'Tis late, and I must haste away, 

My usual hour of rest is near — 
And do you press me, youths, to stay — 

To stay and revel longer here ? 
Then give me back the scorn of care 

Which spirits light in health allow, 
And give me back the dark brown hair 

Which curl'd upon my even brow. 

457 
Hours of my noontide, 

Fast are ye flying ; 
Green leaves of summer 

Fading and dying. 
Echoes of memory 

Yet I would cherish ; 
Swept by the autumn wind, — 
\ Listen ; they perish ! . 



h 



136 Prize Selections. 

Well, — give the little years their way; 

Think, speak, and act the while ; 
Lift up the bare front to the day, 

And make their wrinkles smile. 
They mould the noblest living head ; 
They carve the best tomb for the dead. 

459 
But when 'tis winter weather, 

And crosses grieve, 

And friends deceive, 

And rain and sleet 

The lattice beat, — 

Oh ! then 'tis sweet 

To sit and sing 
Of the friends with whom, in the days of spring, 
We roamed through the greenwood together. 

460 
Wherefore should man, frail child of clay, 

Who, from the cradle to the shroud, 
Lives but the insect of a day, — 

Oh, why should mortal man be proud ? 
His brightest visions just appear, 

Then vanish, and no more are found ; 
The stateliest pile his pride can rear, 

A breath may level with the ground. 



Prize Selections. 137 

461 

The shortest space, which we so lightly prize 

When it is coming, and before our eyes, 

Let it but slide into the eternal main, 

No realms, no worlds, can purchase it again 

Remembrance only makes the footsteps last, 

When winged time, which fixed the prints, is past. 

462 
They dig for hell beneath, 
They labor hard for death, 
Run themselves out of breath 

To overtake it. 
Hell is not had for naught, 
Damnation's dearly bought, 
And with great labor sought — 

They'll not forsake it. 

463 

From clime to clime pursue the scene, 
And mark in all thy spacious way, 

Where'er the tyrant, Man, has been, 
There Peace, the cherub, can not stay, 
In wilds and woodlands far away, 

She builds her solitary bower, 
Where only anchorites have trod, 
Or friendless men, to worship God, 

Have wandered for an hour. 



I 






138 



Prize Selections. 



464 
Man ! foolish man ! 
Scarce know'st thou how thyself began ; 
Scarce hast thou thought enough to prove thou art; 
Yet steeled with studied boldness, thou darest try 
To send thy doubting reason's dazzled eye 
Through the mysterious gulf of vast immensity; 



465 
Lord, what am I? A worm, dust, vapor, nothing 1 
What is my life ? A dream, a daily dying ! 
What is my flesh ? My soul's uneasy clothing ! 
What is my time ? A minute ever flying ! 

My time, my flesh, my life, and I — 

What are we, Lord, but vanity ? 



466 
How long shall man's imprisoned spirit groan 

'Twixt doubt of heaven and deep disgust of earth ? 
Where all worth knowing never can be known, 

And all that can be known, alas ! is nothing worth. 
Untaught by saint, by cynic, or by sage, 

And all the spoils of time that load their shelves, 
We do not quit, but change our joys in age — 

Joys framed to stifle thought, and lead us from our 
selves. 



Prize Selections. 139 

467 
Of what is 't fools make such vain keeping ? 
Sin, their conception : their birth, weeping : 
Their life, a general mist of error ; 
Their death, a hideous storm of terror. 

468 
Poor wanderers of a stormy day, 

From wave to wave we're driven, 
And Fancy's flash and Reason's ray 
Serve but to light the troubled way, — 

There's nothing calm but Heaven ! 

469 

As lightning glance of seraphim; thou sitt'st 

Before the builded throne of symphonies, 

Thyself a fragile. instrument of strains 

Immortal, that long ages, ages hence, 

Though thou art dust, shall mourn from Earth to 

Heaven, 
With voice sublime, the doom of Paradise. 

470 
A sacred spark created by his breath, 

The immortal mind of man his image bears ; 
A spirit living 'mid the forms of death, 

Oppressed, but not subdued, by mortal cares. 






140 Prize Selections 

O man ! thy fabric's like a well-formed state ; 

Thy thoughts, first ranked, were sure designed the 

great, 
Passions plebeians are, which factions raise ; 
Wine, like poured oil, excites the raging blaze ; 
Then giddy anarchy's rude triumphs rise : 
Then sovereign Reason from her empire flies : 
That ruler once deposed, wisdom and wit, 
To noise and folly, place and power, submit ; 
Like a frail bark thy weakened mind is tossed, 
Unsteered, unbalanced, till its wealth is lost. 

472 
All things in nature are proportionate ; 
Is man alone in an imperfect state, — 
He who doth all things rule and regulate ? — 

Then where the dead? 
If here they perish, where their being's germ, — 
Here were their thoughts', their hopes', their wishes' 

term, — 
Why should a giant's strength propel a worm ? — 

The dead ! the dead ! 



473 
How small a part of time they share 
That are so wondrous sweet and fair. 



Prize Selections. 141 

474 
Man, like the generous vine, supported lives : 
The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives. 
On their own axis as the planets run, 
Yet make at once their circle round the sun : 
So two consistent motions act the soul ; 
And one regards itself, and one the whole. 
Thus God and Nature linked the general frame 
And bade self-love and social be the same. 

475 
Goaded by fears, by doubts perplexed, 
By rival gusts of logic vexed, 
Baffled by whither, whence, and why, 
To thee, O Truth, to thee 1 cry : 
"Hide not thy nectar-nippled breast — 
Boundless my thirst, life-old my quest — 
O hide no more, but satisfy, 
Though I grow drunk, or mad, or die ! " 

476 

O weary woman, thine the weary work ! 

477 
Charming woman can true converts make, 
We love the precepts for the teacher's sake ; 
Virtue in her appears so bright and gay, 
We hear with pleasure, and with pride obey. 






142 Prize Selections. 

478 
Ye watchful sprites, who make e'en man your care, 

479 
You are not free because you're more than fair. 

480 
No stars shine brighter than the kingly man, 
Who nobly earns whatever crown he wears, 
Who grandly conquers, or as grandly dies ; 
And the white banner of his manhood bears, 
Through all the years uplifted to the skies. 

481 
O woman ! 
Such is thy varying nature, that the waves 
Are not more fluctuating than thy opinion, 
Nor sooner are displaced. 

482 

We oft by lightning read in darkest nights; 
And by your passions I read all your natures, 
Though you at other times can keep them dark. 

483 
Women are poets if you so take them, 
One-third poet — the rest what chance 

Of man and marriage may choose to make them. 



Prize Selections. 143 

484 

They curse the glass, and let it take no rest ; 
They pass and spy who gazeth on their face ; 
They darkly ask whose beauty seemeth best ; 
They hark and mark who marketh most their grace ; 
They stay their steps, and stalk a stately pace ; 
They jealous are of every sight they see ; 
They strive to seem, but never care to be. 



485 
If women could be fair, and yet not fond, 
Or that their love were firm, not fickle still, 
I would not marvel that they made men bond 
By service long to purchase their good-will ; 
But when I see how frail those creatures are, 
I muse that men forget themselves so far. 



486 
How little flattering is a woman's love ! 
Worth to the heart, come how it may, a world ; 
Worth to men's measures of their own deserts, 
If weighed in wisdom's balance, merely nothing. 

How little flattering is a woman's love ! 
Given commonly to whosoe'er is nearest 
And propped with most advantage. 



I 



144 Prize Selectio7is. 

487 
'Tis woman's hate of womankind 

That makes our lives a wretched span; 
Since you will scorn a woman so, 

O, why forgive a man ? 

488 
Women's rage, like shallow water, 
Does not show their hurtless nature ; 
When the stream seems rough and frowning, 
There is then less fear of drowning. 

489 
Man ever is an Adam, woman Eve : 

He asks to taste the apple in her hand, 
And, when he's eaten it and is arraigned, 

Exclaims, " Behold, the woman gave it me ! : 

490 
In woman is all truth and steadfastness. 



491 

The fleet foot and the feeble foot 

Both seek the self-same goal ; 
The weakest soldier's name is writ 

On the mighty army roll ; 
And God, who made man's body strong, made also the 
woman's soul. 



Prize Selections, 145 

492 

Be a woman ! on to duty ! 

Raise the world from all that's low; 
Place high in the social heaven 

Virtue's fair and radiant bow ; 
Lend thy influence to each effort 

That shall raise our nature human 
Be not fashion's gilded lady, — 

Be a brave, whole-souled, true woman. 

493 

Though she may not in the battle 

Bravely lead men to the fight — 
Though she may not wield the sabre 

For the right against the might ; 
She can hover near the bedside 

Where the wounded soldier lies — 
She can cheer his dying moments, 

Watch beside him till he dies. 



494 
But never, in her varied sphere, 
Is woman to the heart more dear 
Than when her homely task she plies, 
With cheerful duty in her eyes ; 
And, every lowly path well trod, 
Looks meekly upward to her God. 






146 



Prize Selections. 



495 
I hardly know the reason why, — 

But women are so made ; 
I could not give a man a rose 

To see it 'neath his tread, 
Although he trod on it, indeed, 

To save his very soul 
From stifling in the thoughts of me 

Its sweetness might enrolh 



496 
She's one, who when she fills the term for which on 

earth she's sent to us, 
Flies back to heaven the angel that she was when she 

was lent to us. 



497 
Woman ! bless'd partner of our joys and woes ! 
Even in the darkest hour of earthly ill, 
Untarnislrd yet, thy fond affection glows, 
Throbs with each pulse, and beats with every thrill ! 

498 
Woman's empire, holier, more refined, 
Moulds, moves, and sways the fallen yet God-breathed 

mind, 
Lifting the earth-crushed heart to hope and heaven. 



Prize Selections. 147 

499 
Oh sorrow ! where on earth hast thou not sped 
Thy fatal arrows ! on what lovely, head 
Hast thou not poured, alas ! thy bitter phial, 
And cast some shadow on the Spirit's dial ! 
Why, why hast thou selected woman's heart, 
To be the mark for thy unerring dart ? 

500 
For guiltless woes her sorrows flow, 

And suffering vice compels her tear ; 
'Tis hers to soothe the ills below, 

And bid life's fairer views appear ; 
To woman's gentle kind we owe 

What comforts and delights us here ; 
They its gay hopes on youth bestow, 

And care they soothe and age they cheer. 

5™ 

There still remains this for all time to be : 
The war of the world was fought for me. 
Give them no pity that died for me there, 
Men can never more die for a face so fair. 
And what does it matter that now they lie, 
Quiet and silent beneath the sky ? 
Remember that none evermore can be 
Back for those years in Troy with me. 






148 



Prize Selections. 






502 
You say, sir, once a wit allow'd 
A woman to be like a cloud, 
Accept a simile as soon 
Between a woman and the moon ; 
For let mankind say what they will, 
The sex are heavenly bodies still. 

Genteel in personage, 
Conduct, and equipage ; 
Noble by heritage, 

Generous and free ; 
Brave, not romantic ; 
Learned, not pedantic ; 
Frolic, not frantic — 

This must he be. 



S°4 
Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing 

Ever made by the Hand above — 
A woman's heart, and a woman's life, 

And a woman's wonderful love. 
Do you know that you have asked for this priceless 
thing 

As a child might ask for a toy ? 
Demanding what others have died to win, 

With the reckless dash of a boy. 



Prize Selections. 149 

SOS 
Not she with trait'rous kiss her Saviour stung, 
Not she denied him with unholy tongue ; 
She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave, 
Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave. 

506 

The sparrow and linnet will feed from your hand, 
Grow tame at your kindness, and come at command; 
Exert with your husband the same happy skill ; 
For hearts, like young birds, may be tamed at your 

will. 
Be gay and good-humored, complying and kind, 
Turn the chief of your care from your face to your 

mind ; 
'Tis thus that a wife may her conquest improve, 
And Hymen shall rivet the fetters of Love. 

5°7 
Woman, how divine your mission 

Here upon our natal sod ! 
Keep, oh, keep the young heart open 

Always to the breath of God ! 
All true trophies of the ages 

Are from mother-love impearled, 
For the hand that rocks the cradle 

Is the hand that rocks the world. 






150 Prize Selections. 

508 
Before I trust my fate to thee, 
Or place my hand in thine, 
Before I let thy future give 
Color and form to mine, 
Before I peril all for thee, question thy soul to-night 
for me. 

I saw a young bride in her beauty and pride, 

Bedeck'd in her snowy array ; 
And the bright flush of joy mantled high on her cheek, 

And the future look'd blooming and gay: 
And with woman's devotion she laid her fond heart 

At the shrine of idolatrous love, 
And she anchor'd her hopes to this perishing earth, 

By the chain which her tenderness wove. 



Swallows will flit round the desolate ruin, 
Telling of spring and its joyous renewing, 
And thoughts of thy love, and its manifold treasure, 
Are circling my heart with a promise of pleasure. 
O Spring of my spirit ! O May of my bosom ! 
Shine out on my soul, till it bourgeon and blossom ; 
The waste of my life has a rose-root within it, 
And thy fondness alone to the sunshine can win it. 



Prize Selections. 1 5 1 

5" 

What could she be ! Oh, shame ! I blush to think what 

she has been, 
The most unselfish of all wives to the selfishest of men. 
Yes, plain and homely now she is ; she's ignorant, 'tis 

true ; 
For me she rubbed herself quite out ; I represent the 

two. 

5 1 * 

Oh ! give me back that royal dream 

My fancy wrought, 
When I have seen your sunny eyes 

Grow moist with thought ; 
And fondly hoped, dear Love, your heart from mine 

Its spell had caught ; 
And laid me down to dream that dream divine, 

But true, methought, 
Of how my life's long task would be, to make yours 
blessed as it ought. 

Give me, next good, an understanding wife, 
By nature wise, not learned by much art ; 

Some knowledge on her part, will, all her life, 
More scope of Conversation impart ; 

Besides her inborn virtue fortify ; 

They are most firmly good, that best know why. 



1 






152 



Prize Selections. 



5*4 

Another daughter dries a father's tears ; 
Another sister claims a brother's love ; 
An injured husband hath no other wife, 
Save her who wrought him shame. 

Ye shepherds so gay, who make love to ensnare 
And cheat with false vows the too credulous fair, 
In search of true pleasure, how vainly you roam ! 
To hold it for life, you must find it at home. 

516 

Have I a wish ? — 'tis all her own ; 
All hers and mine are rolPd in one, — 

Our hearts are so entwined, 
That like the ivy round the tree, 
Bound up in closest amity, 

'Tis death to be disjoin'd. 



Si7 
For woman is warm though man be cold, 

And the night will hallow the day ! 
Till the heart which at even was weary and cold 
Can rise in the morning gay, 
Sweet wife ; 
To its work in the morning gay. 



Prize Selections. 153 

This truth is manifest — a gentle wife 
Is still the sterling comfort of man's life ; 
To fools a torment, but a lasting boon 
To those who wisely keep their Honeymoon. 



5*9 
How happy a thing were a wedding, 

And a bedding, 
If a man might purchase a wife 

For a twelvemonth and a day ; 
But to live with her all a man's life, 

Forever and for aye, 
Till she grows as gray as a cat, 
Good faith, Mr. Parson, excuse me from that ! 

520 
Marriage, rightly understood, 
Gives to the tender and the good 
A paradise below. 



5 21 . 
My fond affection thou hast seen, 

Then judge of my regret 
To think more happy thou hadst been 

If we had never met ! 






154 Prize Selections. 

522 
Man is for woman made, 

And woman made for man : 
As the spur is for the jade, 
As the scabbard for the blade, 

As for liquor is the can, 
So man's for woman made, 

And woman made for man. 



523 
The parent love the wedded love includes, 
The one permits the two their mutual moods, 
The two each other know 'mid myriad multitudes ; 
With childlike intellect discerning love, 
And mutual action energizing love, 
In myriad forms affiliating love. 
A world whose seasons bloom from pole to pole, 
A force which knows both starting-point and goal, 
A home in heaven — the union in the soul. 

5 2 4 

"Till Death us part." 

So speaks the heart, 
When each to each repeats the words of doom ; 

Through blessing and through curse, 

For better and for worse, 
We will be one till that dread hour shall come. 






Prize Selections. 155 

5 2 5 
Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been 
To public feasts, where meet a public rout, 
Where they that are without would fain go in, 
And they that are within would fain go out. 

526 
We have careful thought for the stranger, 

And smiles for the sometime guest ; 
But oft for our own the bitter tone, 

Though we love our own the best. 
Ah ! lips with the curve impatient, 

Ah ! brow with the shade of scorn, 
'Twere a cruel fate were the night too late 

To undo the work of the morn. 

5 2 7 
The moral of my tale is this, 
Variety's the soul of bliss ; 
But such variety alone 
As makes our home the more our own. 

528 
This little spot of earth you stand upon 
Is more to me than the extended plains 
Of my great father's kingdom. Here I reign 
In full delights, in joys of power unknown ; 
Your love my empire, and your heart my throne. 



156 



Prize Selections. 



5 2 9 
" From he?iceforth no more twain, bat one." 

Yet ever one through being twain, 
As self is ever lost and won 

Through love's own ceaseless loss and gain ; 
And both their full perfection reach, 
Each growing the full self through each. 

53° 
Ah me, my love ! the darkness falls 

Full soon to shroud our brightest dreaming ; 
And golden roofs and crystal walls 

Are based, too oft, on cloudy seeming ; 
But, hand in hand, and heart with heart, 

We twain abide the twilight hoary, 
And wait until the shadows part 

That hide from us our House of Glory. 



S3i 

One wild flower from the path of love, 

All lowly though it lie, 
Is dearer than the wreath that waves 

To stern ambition's eye. 
Give me the boon of love ! 

The lamp of fame shines far, 
But love's soft light glows near and warm— 

A pure and household star. 



Prize Selections. 157 

532 
An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain ! 
O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again ! 
The birds singing gayly that came at my call ; — 
Give me them ! and the peace of mind dearer than all ! 



I saw two clouds at morning, 

Tinged by the rising sun, 
And in the dawn they floated on, 

And mingled into one ; 
I thought that morning cloud was bless'd, 

It moved so sweetly to the west. 



534 , 
Like Alexander I will reign, 

And I will reign alone ; 
My thoughts shall evermore disdain 

A rival on my throne. 



535 
A knight and a lady once met in a grove, 
While each was in quest of a fugitive love ; 
A river ran mournfully murmuring by, 
And they wept in its waters for sympathy. 






158 Prize Selections. 

Love's life is in its own replies, — 

To each low beat it beats, 
Smiles back the smiles, sighs back the sighs, 
fc And every throb repeats. 
Then, since one loving heart still throws 

Two shadows in love's sun, 
How t should two loving hearts compose 

And mingle into one ? 



537 
I too have suffer' d : yet I know 

She is not cold, though she seems so : 
She is not cold, she is not light ; 

But our ignoble souls lack might. 



538 

With the sunshine, and the swallows, and the flowers, 

She is coming, my beloved o'er the sea ! 
And I sit alone and count the weary hours, 
Till she cometh in her beauty back to me ; 
And my heart will not be quiet, 
But in a " purple riot," 
Keeps ever madly beating, 
At the thought of that sweet meeting, 
When she cometh with the summer o'er the sea. 



I 



Prize Selections. 159 

539 
Drops from the ocean of eternity, . 

Rays from the centre of unfailing light, 
Things that the human eye can never see 

Are spirits, — yet they dwell near human sight. 
But as the shattered magnet's fragments still, 

Though far apart, will to each other turn, — 
So in the breast imprisoned spirits will 

To meet their fellow spirits vainly burn. 

54o 
I have another life — a life I long to meet : 
Without which life my life is incomplete. 
Ah ! sweeter sejf, like me art thou astray, 
Trying with all thy soul to find the way 
To mine ? Straying like mine to find the breast 
On which alone can weary heart find rest. 

S4i 
Yet well content with blessed discontent 

I dream my dream, nor care to waken soon ; 
The dream bides fair, though fairer far be meant, 

Let the white dawn delay the golden noon. 
So watch, my heart, and let me dream my dream ; 

Watch and awake me when the time shall come ; 
Perhaps our prince is nearer than we deem, 

But greet him thou — my dream may make me dumb. 



i6o 



Prize Selections. 






542 
O, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing, 
A wave of the ocean, a bird on the wing ! 

543 
For you and I are far apart ; 

And never may we meet ; 
Till you are glad and grand, sweetheart, 

Till I am fair and sweet. 
Till morning light has kissed us white 

As highest Alpine snow, 
Till both are brave and bright of sight — 

Go wander high or low, 
Sweetheart ; 

For God will have it so. 



544 
For hearts of truest mettle 
Absence doth join, and time doth settle. 

545 
Part in peace — Christ's life was peace ; 

Let us live our life in Him ; 
Part in peace — Christ's death was peace ; 

Let us die our death in Him. 
Part in peace — Christ promise gave 
Of a life beyond the grave, 
Where all mortal partings cease : 
Brethren, sisters ! part in peace. 



Prize Selections. 161 

546 
Though lost to sight, to memory dear 
Thou ever wilt remain. 

547 
Good-night ; I have to say good-night 
To such a host of peerless things ; 
Good-night unto that fragile hand, 
All queenly with its weight of rings ; 
Good-night to fond, uplifted eyes, 
Good-night unto the perfect mouth, 
And all the sweetness nestled there — 
The snowy hand detains me, then 
I'll have to say good-night again. 

548 
Be kind, dear Love, and never say, " Good-bye ! " 

But always when we're parting — "Till to-morrow;" 
So shall my lips forget to frame a sigh, 

And Hope smile fondly in the face of Sorrow. 

549 
Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest ! 
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest ! 
Thine be ilka joy and treasure, 
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure ! 
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ! 
Ae fare weel, alas ! forever ! 






1 62 



Prize Selections. 



55o 
Now, love ! with paths divided, hands asunder, 

Now we have learned the meaning, you and I, 
Hid in the misty sky, the dark sea under, 

Hid in those words I spoke, and knew not why- 
" Some measure love by gold, 

By endless time, by soundless sea; 
But I — I love you well enough 

To leave you, love, if needs must be." 



55 1 
We parted in silence — our cheeks were wet 

With the tears that were past. controlling; 
We vow'd we would never — no, never forget, 

And those vows at the time were consoling; 
But those lips that echo'd the sounds of mine 

Are as cold as the lonely river ; 
And that eye, that beautiful spirit's shrine, 

Has shrouded its fires forever. 



552 
They parted — ne'er to meet again ! 
But never either found another 
To free the hollow heart from paining — 
They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder ; 
A dreary sea now flows between. 



Prize Selections. 163 

553 
He is gone, O my heart, he is gone ; 

And the sea remains, and the sky ; 
And the skiffs flit in and out, 

And the white-winged yachts go by. 
And the waves run purple and green, 

And the sunshine glints and glows, 
And freshly across the Bay 

The breath of the morning blows^ 

554 
The night has a thousand eyes, 

And the day but one ; 
Yet the light of the bright world dies, 

With the dying sun. 
The mind has a thousand eyes, 

And the heart but one ; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies, 

When love is done. 

555 

Men have been known to lightly turn the corner of a 
street, 

And days have grown to months, and months to lag- 
ging years, 

Ere they have looked in loving eyes again. 

Parting, at best, is underlaid 

With tears and pain. 






164 Prize Selections. 

556 

As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay 

With canvas drooping, side by side, 
Two towers of sail at dawn of day 

Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried ; 
When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, 

And all the darkling hours they plied, 
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas 

By each was cleaving side by side. 



557 
It may not be. Good-night, dear friend, good-night ! 

And when you see the violets again, 
And hear, through boughs with swollen buds awhite, 

The gentle falling of the April rain, 
Remember her whose young life held thy name 

With all things holy, in its outward flight, 
And turn sometimes from busy haunts of men 

To hear again her low good-night ! good-night ! 



55* 
Softly ; 
She is lying 
With her lips apart ; 

Softly ; 
She is dying of a broken heart. 



Prize Selections. 165 

559 
I have just been learning the lesson of life, 

The sad, sad lesson of loving, 
And all of its power for pleasure and pain 

Been slowly, sadly proving ; 
And all that is left of the bright, bright dream, 

With its thousand brilliant phases, 
Is a handful of dust in a coffin hid — 

A coffin under the daisies. 

560 
When earth is dark and memory 

Fale in the heaven above, — 
The heart can bear to lose its joy, 

But not to cease to love, 
But what shall guide the choice within, 

Of guilt or agony, — 
When to remember is to sin, 

And to forget — to die ! 

561 

Of her that bore too long the smart 
Of love delayed, yet keeping green 
Love's lilies for the one unseen, 
Counselling but her woman's heart, 
Chose in all ways life's better part ; — 
Arcadian Evangeline. 






1 66 Prize Selections. 

562 
He loved two women ; one whose soul was clean 

As any lily growing on its stalk ; 
And one with glowing eyes and sensuous mien, 

Who fired him with her beauty and her talk. 
The pure one loved him till the day he died, 

But when he died his dearest friend she wed. 
The wanton from the wild world drew aside, 

And no man saw her face till she was dead. 



5 6 3 
He came too late ! Neglect had tried 

Her constancy too long ; . 
Her love had yielded to her pride, 

And the deep sense of wrong. 
She scprn'd the offering of a heart 

Which linger'd on its way, 
Till it could no delight impart, 

Nor spread one cheering ray. 



5 6 4 
O bitterness of things too sweet ! 
O broken singing of the dove ! 
Love's wings are over fleet, 
And like the panther's feet 
The feet of love. 



Prize Selections. 167 

565 
Mistrust ! an ever-tattling brook 

That winds thro' Love's heritage ! — 
The head-lines in a lover's book, 

Creeping along from page to page ! 



566 
How does a man love ? Once for all, 
The sweetest voices of life may call, 
Sorrow daunt him, or death dismay, 
Joy's red roses bedeck his way ; 
Fortune smile, or jest, or frown, 
The cruel thumb of the world turn down, 
Loss betray him, or love delight, 
Through storm or sunshine, by day or night, 
Wandering, toiling, asleep, awake, 
Though souls may madden, or weak hearts break, 
Better than wife, or child, or pelf, 
Once and forever, he loves — himself. 



S67 
Ah, yes ! Thy love was like the stars, but not 

Like faithful stars which gleam with steadfast light, 
But as a darting aerolite, swift shot 

Athrough the blackness of a sombre night, 

Fading as quickly, and as soon forgot. 






1 68 Prize Selections. 

568 
Love not, love not ! The thing you love may change, 

The rosy lip may cease to smile on you ; 
The kindly-beaming eye grow cold and strange, 

The heart still warmly beat, yet not be true. 

Love's but the frailty of the mind, 

When 'tis not with ambition joined ; 

A sickly flame, which, if not fed, expires, 

And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires. 

No Phyllis, no ; your heart to move 

A surer way I'll try ; 
And to revenge my slighted love 

Will still love on, will still love on, and die. 

S7i 
I loved thee once, I'll love no more, 

Thine be the grief as is the blame ; 
Thou art not what thou wast before, 
What reason I should be the same ? 
He that can love unloved again, 
Hath better store of love than brain : 
God send me love my debts to pay, 
While unthrifts fool their love away ! 



Prize Selections. 169 

572 
When change itself can give no more, 
'Tis easy to be true. 

573 
You should leave us to guess by your blushing, 

And not speak the matter too plain ; 
'Tis ours to write and be pushing, 

'Tis yours to affect a disdain. 
That you are in a terrible taking, 

By all these sweet oglings I see ; 
But the fruit that can fall without shaking 

Indeed is too mellow for me. 



574 
I had sworn to be a bachelor, she had sworn to be a 

maid ; 
For we both agreed in a-doubting whether matrimony 

paid. 
Besides, I had my higher aims, for science filled my 

heart ; 
And she said her young affections were all wound up 

in art. 

575 
Heigh-ho, fair Rosaline ! 
Heigh-ho, my heart ! would God that she were mine ! 






170 Prize Selections. 

576 
Of all the torments, all the cares, 

With which our lives are curst ; 
Of all the plagues a lover bears, 

Sure rivals are the worst. 
By partners in each other kind 

Afflictions easier grow ; 
In love alone we hate to find 

Companions of our woe. 

577 
I lately vow'd, but 'twas in haste, 

That I no more would court 
The joys that seem when they are past 

As dull as they are short. 
I oft to hate my mistress swear, 

But soon my weakness find ; 
I make my oaths when she's severe, 

But break them when she is kind. 

578 
Why are the bands of friendship tied 

With so remiss a knot, 
That by the most it is defied, 

And by the most forgot ? 
Why do we step with so light sense 
From friendship to indifference ? 



Prize Selections. 171 

579 
Out upon it, I have lov'd 

Three whole days together ; 
And am likely to love three more, 

If it prove fair weather. 
Time shall moult away his wings, 

Ere he shall discover 
In the whole wide world again 

Such a constant lover. 



580 
She's a sweet little damsel of twenty, 

A mixture of sadness and fun, 
Of lovers I know she has plenty, — 

This sorrowful rhymer is one. 
If only on me she'd take pity, 

My highest delight I'd attain, 
For I'm but a clerk in the city ; 

And she is — my Lady Disdain. 



581 

" You gave me the key to your heart, my love ; 
Then why do you make me knock ? " 



"O, that was yesterday, Saints above ! 
ight I chang 



And last night I changed the lock." 






172 Prize Selections, 

582 
" Yes, I liked you at first, I must confess, 

And a week ago I might have been won, 
But that is all over," she pensively sighed, 

" For I find that you are only a younger son." 

583 

But if, at first, her virgin fear 

Should start at Love's suspected name, 

With that of Friendship soothe her ear — 
True Love and Friendship are the same. 

Diaphenia like the spreading roses, 
That in thy sweets all sweets encloses, 

Fair sweet, how do I love thee ! 
I do love thee as each flower 
Loves the sun's life-giving power ; 

For dead, thy breath to life might move me. 

585 

Lo ! whilst I fondly look upon 

Thy lovely face, drinking the tone 

Of thy sweet voice, my early known, — 

My long, long loved, — my dearest grown, — 

I feel thou art 

A joy, a part 
Of all I prize in soul and heart. 



Prize Selections. 173 

586 
'Tis not her birth, her friends, nor yet her treasure, 
Nor do I covet her for sensual pleasure, 
Nor for that old morality, 
Do I love her 'cause she loves me. 
Sure he that loves his lady 'cause she's fair, 
Delights his eye, so loves himself, not her. 
Something there is moves me to love, and I 
Do know I love, but know not how, nor why. 

587 

Daylight may do for the gay, 

The thoughtless, the heartless, the free ; 
But there's something about the moon's ray, 

That is sweeter to vou and to me : 
Oh ! remember, be sure to be there, 

For though dearly a moonlight I prize, 
I care not for all in the air, 

If I want the sweet light of your eyes ! 

588 
Ask what you will, my own and only love ; 

For to love's service true, 
Your least wish sways me as from worlds above, 

And I yield all to you 

Who art the only she, 
And in one girl all womanhood to me. 






174 Prize Selections. 

5*9 
Did I love thee less, 
Then might I love thee more ; but now my soul 
Is filled throughout with perfect tenderness ; 
No part of me thou hast, but the full whole. 

590 
Time turneth into nought each princely state ; 
Time brings a flood from new-resolved snow ; 
Time calms the sea where tempest was of late ; 
Time eats whate'er the moon can see below ; 
And yet no time prevails in my behoof, 
Nor any time can make me cease to love ! 

59 1 
What joy can be greater than this is ? 

My life on thy lips shall be spent ; 
But those who can number their kisses 

Will always with few be content. 

59 2 
A kiss now that will hang upon my lips 
As sweet as morning dew upon a rose, 
And full as long. 

593 
Love is like a landscape which doth stand, 
Smooth at a distance, rough at hand. 



Prize Selections. 175 

594 
The theme is old — even as the flowers are old, 

That sweetly showed 
Their silver bosses and bright-budding gold 

Through Eden's sod ; 
And still peep forth through grass and garden mould, 

As fresh from God ! 

595 
Ah ! what is love ? It is a pretty thing, 
As sweet unto a shepherd as a king, 

And sweeter too ; 
For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, 
And cares can make the sweetest face to frown : 

And then, ah then, 
If country loves such sweet desires gain, 
What lady would not love a shepherd swain ? 

596 

Love, born in hours of joy and mirth, 

With mirth and joy may perish ; 
That to which darker hours gave birth 

Still more and more we cherish. 
It looks beyond the clouds of time, 

And through death's shadowy portal, 
Made by adversity sublime, 

By faith and hope immortal. 



T 



176 Prize Selections. 

597 
Love, a child, is ever crying ; 
Please him and he straight is flying ; 
Give him, he the more is craving, 
Never satisfied with having. 



598 
How sweet I roamed from field to field 

And tasted all the summer's pride, 
Till I the Prince of Love beheld, 

Who in the sunny beams did glide ! 
He showed me lilies for my hair, 

And blushing roses for my brow ; 
He led me through his garden fair, 

Where all his golden pleasures grow. 



599 
When vex'd by cares and harrass'd by distress, 
The storms of fortune fill thy soul with dread, 
Let Love, consoling Love, still sweetly bless, 
And his assuasive balm benignly shed : 
His downy plumage, o'er thy pillow spread, 
Shall lull thy weeping sorrows to repose ; 
To Love the tender heart hath ever fled, 
As on its mother's breast the infant throws 
Its sobbing face, and there in sleep forgets its woes. 



Prize Selections, iyy 

600 
He loves not well whose love is bold : 

I would not have thee come too nigh. 
The sun's gold would not seem pure gold 

Unless the sun were in the sky : 
To take him thence and chain him near 
Would make his beauty disappear. 

601 

O love ! 'tis a wonderful passion ; 

It makes or it mars us all ; 
By love men may walk with the angels, 

By love the angels may fall. 

602 

A glance — a touch of hands ! and Love is born, 
A hopeful, untried child, with vague desires 
Showing through limpid eyes like unknown fires 

That shine through pure pale stars at early morn. 

603 
O naked baby Love among the roses, 
Watching with laughing eyes for me, 
W 7 ho says that thou art blind ? Who hides from thee 
Who is it in his foolishness supposes 
That ever a bandage round thy sweet face closes 
Thicker than a gauze ? I know that thou canst see ! 



i;8 



Prize Selections. 



604 

Every flower 
That to the sun its heaving breast expands 
Is born of love. And every song of bird 
That floats mellifluent on the balmy air, 
Is but a love-note. Heaven is full of love ; 
Its starry eyes run o'er with tenderness, 
And soften every heart that meets their gaze, 
As downward looking on this wayward world 
They light it back to God. 

605 
Ah, still I feel 'tis sweet to love ! 
But sweeter to be loved again. 

606 

Love is a golden star, * 

A fragrance of the night, 
A rainbow in the air, 

A cloud, a lost delight ; 
Love, 'tis the sense of Heaven near, 

The memory of Heaven gone, 
The last leaf of the lingering year, 

The faint smell of the dawn. 



607 
Beauties, like stars, in borrowed lustre shine. 



Prize Selections. 179 

608 
The warrior for the True, the Right, 

Fights in Love's name ; 
The love that lures thee from that fight 

Lures thee to shame : 
That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves 

The spirit free, — 
That love, or none, is fit for one 

Man-shaped like thee. 

609 

Divinest, supremest, 
Crowned Queen of the Quick and the Dead ; 

She is more than thou dreamest, 
O soul of desire and of dread ! 

She is Spring-time and Gladness, 
And rapture all glory above ; 

She is Longing and Sadness ; 
She is Birth — she is Death — she is Love ! 

610 

She's gone into the West, 
To dazzle when the sun is down, 

And rob the world of rest. 
She took our daylight with her, 

The smiles that we love best, 
With morning blushes on her cheek, 

And pearls upon her breast. 






180 Prize Selections. 

611 

When voyagers make a foreign port, 

And leave their precious prize, 
Returning home they bear for freight 

A bartered merchandise. 
Alas ! when you come back to me, 

And come not as of yore, 
But with your alien wealth and peace. 

Can we be lovers more ? 

612 
The earth is fairer since she is, 

And nearer leans the happy sky; 
And half his terrors death shall miss, 

Because my lady, too, must die. 

613 
Her pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in her cheeks,, and so distinctly wrought, 
That one might almost say her body thought. 

614 

A sweet attractive kind of grace, 
A full assurance given by looks, 

Continual comfort in a face 

The lineaments of Gospel books. 



Prize Selections, 181 

615 

I saw her once, one little while, and then no more ; 
'Twas Eden's light on earth awhile, and then no more. 
Amid the throng she passed along the meadow floor ; 
Spring seemed to smile on earth awhile, and then no 

more. 
But whence she came, which way she went, what garb 

she wore, 
I noted not ; I gazed awhile, and then no more. 

616 

She came in September, 
And if she were o'erlaid with lily leaves, 
And substantived by mere content of dews, 
Or limb'd of flower-stalks and sweet pedicles, 
Or made of golden dust from thigh of bees, 
Or caught of morning mist, or the unseen 
Material of an odor, her pure text 
Could seem no more remote from the corrupt 
And seething compound of our common flesh ! 

617 

It was brown with a golden gloss, Janette, 
It was finer than silk of the floss — my pet; 
'Twas a beautiful mist falling down to your wrist, 
'Twas a thing to be braided, and jewelled, and kissed — 
'Twas the loveliest hair in the world — my pet. 






1 82 Prize Selections. 

618 

She is seven, by the calendar, 

A lily's almost as tall ; 
But oh ! this little lady's by far 
The proudest lady of all. 
It's her sport and pleasure to flout me ! 
To spurn, and scorn, and scout me! 
But ah ! I've a notion it's naught but play, 
And that, say what she will and feign what she may, 
She can't well do without me. 

619 

She is modest but not bashful, 

Free and easy but not bold, 
Like an apple, ripe and mellow, 

Not too young and not too old. 
Half inviting, half repulsing, 

Now advancing, and now shy; — 
There is mischief in her dimple — 

There is danger in her eye. 

620 
There is a garden in her face, 

Where roses and white lilies blow; 
A heavenly paradise is that place, 

Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow ; 
There cherries grow that none may buy, 
Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry. 



L 



Prize Selections. 183 

621 

Her robes of state are as pure as snow, 

In every heart she finds a throne, 
In all the land she has no foe ; 

The name of rebel is unknown. 
Her loyal subjects, low and high, 

Full many a costly tribute bring; 
The glories of her kingdom, I 

Her humble poet laureate sing. 

622 
Merry Margaret, as midsummer flower, 
Gentle as falcon, or hawk of the tower ; 
With solace and gladness, 
Much mirth and no madness, 
All good and no badness, 
So joyously, 
So maidenly, 
So womanly. 

623 
Who has robb'd the ocean cave, 

To tinge thy lips with coral hue ? 
Who from India's distant wave, 

For thee, those pearly treasures drew? 
Who, from yonder orient sky, 
Stole the morning of thine eye ? 






184 Prize Selections. 

624 

For all thine artless elegance, 

And all thy native grace, 
For the music of thy mirthful voice, 

And the sunshine of thy face ; 
For thy guileless look and speech sincere, 

Yet sweet as speech can be, 
Here's a health, my Scottish lassie, 

Here's a hearty health to thee ! 

625 
Shy as the squirrel, and wayward as the swallow ; 
Swift as swallow when, athwart the western flood, 
Circleting the surface, he meets his mirrored winglets, 
Is the dear one in her maiden bud. 

626 

The morning pearls, 
Dropt in the lily's spotless bosom, are 
Less chastely cool, ere the meridian sun 
Hath kiss'd them into heat. 



627 
As lamps burn silent with unconscious light, 
So modest ease in beauty shines most bright, 
Unaiming charms with edge resistless fall, 
And she who means no mischief does it all. 



Prize Selections. 185 

628 
Her little motions when she spoke, 

The presence of an upright soul, 
The living light that from her broke, 

It was the perfect whole : 
We saw it in her floating hair, 

We saw it in her laughing eye ; 
For every look and feature there 

Wrought works that cannot die. 

629 
Thou wast lovelier than the roses 

In their prime ; 
Thy voice excelPd the closes 

Of sweetest rhyme ; 
Thy heart was as a river 

Without a main, 
Would I had loved thee never, 

Florence Vane. 

630 
Sweet are the charms of her I love, 

More fragrant than the damask rose, 
Soft as the down of turtle-dove, 

Gentle as air when Zephyr blows, 
Refreshing as descending rains 
To sunburnt climes and thirsty plains. 






1 86 



Prize Selections. 



631 

I sincerely envy him 
Who the fortune had to limn 
Your bewitching hazel eyes 
With his bursh : 
Who would study ev'ry grace 
In your winsome little face, 
And the subtle charm that lies 
In your blush. 

632 
A form so fair, that, like the air, 
'Tis less of earth than heaven. 

633 

Those eyes, those eyes, how full of heaven they are, 
When the calm twilight leaves the heaven most holy, 

Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star 
Do ye drink in your liquid melancholy ? 



634 
Give me a look, give me a face, 
That makes simplicity a grace ; 
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free : 
Such sweet neglect more taketh me, 
Than all the adulteries of art, 
That strike mine eyes, but not my heart. 



Prize Selections. 187 

" Saw ye my wee thing ? saw ye my ain thing ? 

Saw ye my true-love down by yon lea ? 

Crossed she the meadow, yestereen, at the gloaming? 

Sought she the burnie, where flowers the haw-tree ? 

Her hair it is lint-white ; her skin it is milk-white ; 

Dark is the blue o' her saft-rolling ee ! 

Red, red her ripe lips, and sweeter than roses ; 

Where could my wee thing wander frae me ? " 

636 
Her parents held the Quaker rule, 
Which doth the human feelings cool, 
But she was trained in Nature's school, 
Nature had blest her. 

She has a tender, winning way, 

And walks the earth with gentle grace ; 

And roses with the lily play 
Amid the beauties of her face. 

I think Nature hath lost the mould 
Where she her shape did take ; 

Or else I doubt if Nature could 
So fair a creature make. 






l&J Prize Selections. 

Beautiful faces are those that wear — 
It matters little if dark or fair — 
Whole-souled honesty printed there. 
Beautiful eyes are those that show, 
Like crystal panes where heart-fires glow, 
Beautiful thoughts that burn below. 

640 
Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face, 
A god in strength, with more than godlike grace ; 
All, all divine — no struggling muscle glows, 
Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows, 
But animate with deity alone, 
In deathless glory lives the breathing stone. 

641 
'Tis much immortal beauty to admire, 

But more immortal beauty to withstand ; 
The perfect soul can overcome desire, 

If beauty with divine delight be scanned. 

642 
One thing I warn thee : bow no knee to gold ; 
Less innocent it makes the guileless tongue ; 
It turns the feelings prematurely old, 

And they who keep their best affections young, 
Best love the Beautiful ! 



Prize Selections, 189 

643 
What is beauty ? Alas ! 'tis a jewel, a glass, 

A bubble, a plaything, a rose, 
'Tis the snow, dew, or air ; 'tis so many things rare 

That 'tis nothing, one well may suppose, 
'Tis a jewel, Love's token ; glass easily broken, 

A bubble that vanisheth soon ; 
A plaything that boys cast aside when it cloys, 

A rose quickly faded and strewn. 

644 

Only the Beautiful is real ! 

All things of which our life is full, 

All mysteries that life inwreathe, 

Birth, life, death, 
All that we dread or darkly feel, — 
All are but shadows, and the Beautiful 

Alone is real. 

645 

Not where long-passed ages sleep, 

Seek we Eden's golden trees ; 
In the future folded deep 

Are its mystic harmonies. 
All before us lies the way, 

Give the past unto the wind ; 
All before us is the day, 

Night and darkness are behind. 



190 Prize Selections. 

646 
The men who march before their kind 

Into the dark must bear the light : 
Its glory glows for those behind : 

These ever chase the flying night. 

647 

Our shadows, that lay behind us, 
Ere the noonday sun passed o'er us, 
Now darken the path before us, 

As we walk away from our morning. 

648 

Darkness before, all joy behind ! 
Yet keep thy courage, do not mind : 
He soonest reads the lesson right 
Who reads with back against the. light! 

649 

When the rough battle of the day is done, 
And evening's peace falls gently on the heart, 
I bound away, across the noisy years, 
Unto the utmost verge of memory's land, 
Where earth and sky in dreamy distance meet, 
And memory dim with dark oblivion joins ; 
Where woke the first remembered sounds that fell 
Upon the ear in childhood's early morn. 



Prize Selections. 191 

650 

The pains and griefs of other days 

May, shadow-like, pursue me yet ; 

But toward the sun my face is set, 
His golden light on all my ways. 



651 

One sweet spring morn, when skies were bright,. 

And the earth was green and gay, — 
When fields were bathed in golden light, 
And feathery mist-wreaths, thin and white, 
Were hung on cliff and mountain height, 
Like chaplets twined by the hand of Night 

To bind the brow of Day, — 
All playfully along the wild, 
Quaffing the breezes pure and mild, 
A thoughtless, merry-hearted child, 

I took my careless way ! 



652 
Upon the white sea-sand 
There sat a pilgrim band, 

Telling the losses that their lives had known, 
While evening waned away 
From breezy cliff and bay, 

And the strong tides went out with weary moan. 






192 



Prize Selections. 

653 

Fair night of June 

Yon silver moon 
Gleams pale and still. The tender tune, 

Faint-floating, plays, 

In moonlit lays, 
A melody of other days. 

'Tis sacred ground ; 

A peace profound 
Comes o'er my soul. I hear no sound, 

Save at my feet 

The ceaseless beat 
Of waters murmuring low and sweet. 



654 
In melancholy fancy, 

Out of myself, 
In the vulcan dancy, 
All the world surveying, 
Nowhere staying, 
Just like a fairy elf ; 
Out o'er the tops of highest mountains skipping, 
Out o'er the hills, the trees and valleys tripping, 
Out o'er the ocean seas, without an oar or shipping, 
Hallo, my fancy, whither wilt thou go ? 

655 

No tributes laid on castles in the air. 



I 



Prize Selections. 193 

656 
I bend above the moving stream, 
And see myself in my own dream, — 

Heaven passing, while I do not pass. 
Something divine pertains to me, 
Or I to it : reality 
Escapes me on this liquid glass. 

I stay my haste, I make delays ; 

For what avails this eager pace ? 
I stand amid the eternal ways, 

And what is mine shall know my face* 
Asleep, awake, by night or day, 

The friends I seek are seeking me ; 
No wind can drive my bark astray, 

Nor change the tide of destiny. 

658 

My thoughts by night are often filPd 

With visions false as fair ; 
For in the Past alone I build 

My castles in the air. 
I dwell not now on what mav be ; 

Night shadows o'er the scene : 
But still my fancy wanders free 

Through that which might have been. 






194 Prize Selections. 

659 

Thought ! that in me works and lives, — 

Life to all things living gives, — 

Art thou not thyself, perchance, 

But the universe in trance ? 

A reflection inly flung 

By that world thou fanciest sprung 

From thyself, — thyself a dream, — 

Of the world's thinking thou the theme ? 

660 
Fancies are but streams 

Of vain pleasure ; 
They who by their dreams 
True joys measure, 
Feasting, starve, laughing, weep, 
Playing smart ; whilst in sleep 

Fools, with shadows smiling, 

Wake and And 

Hopes like wind, 

Idle hopes beguiling. 

Thoughts fly away ; Time hath passed L 

Wake now, awake ! see and taste them ! 



661 
I burned my ships, and then I wished them ba< 
Because some spray clung round them of the sc 
That dearer was than any land to me. 



Prize Selections. 195 

662 

Dreams, loveliest mutabilities of ever-changeful earth ! 
Beauteous and precious blossoming of Time's cold 

desert dearth, 
Incarnadining life's gray mists with sun hues of the 

south, 
And brightening life's horizon-rim with the orient fires 

of youth, 

66 3 
Whether of high or low degree, 
All men and women have ships at sea ; 
Some are speeding over the main, 
And will never return again ; 
Some that have sailed the world around, 
With precious freight are homeward bound ; 
Some are tossed where the breakers free 
Leap over the wrecks down into the sea. 

664 

White in the sunshine her sails will be gleaming, 

See, where my ship comes in ; 
At mast-head and peak her colors streaming, 

Proudly she's sailing in ; 
Love, hope, and joy on her decks are cheering, 
Music will welcome her glad appearing, 
And my heart will sing at her stately nearing, 

When my ship comes in. 



196 



Prize Selections. 



665 
Every sailor in the port 

Knows that I have ships at sea, 
Of the waves and winds the sport; 

And the sailors pity me. 
Oft they come and with me walk, 
Cheering me with hopeful talk, 
Till I put my fears aside, 
And contented watch the tide 

Rise and fall, rise and fall. 



666 
Softly it stole up out of the sea, 
The day that brought my dole to me ; 
Slowly into the star-sown gray 
Dim and dappled it soared away. 
Who would have dreamed such tender light 
Was brimming over with bale and blight ? 
Who would have dreamed that fitful breeze 
Fanned from the tumult of tossing seas ? 
Oh, softly and slowly stole up from the sea 
The day that brought my dole to me. 

667 
She sailed across the harbor-bar, 

And sunshine glimmered in her track,— 
But morning's light or evening's star . 

Shines not upon her coming back. 



Prize Selections. 197 

668 
Alas ! how easily things go wrong ; 
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, 
And there follows a mist, and a weeping rain, 
And life is never the same again. 
Alas ! how hardly things go right ; 
'Tis hard to watch on a Summer's night, 
For the sigh will come, and the kiss will stay, 
And the Summer's night is a Winter's day. 

669 

One forgets the sigh and the kiss too long, 
In a glory of gladness and sunshine and song ; 
Sweet meanings come and new heights arise, 
And life is transfigured in Paradise. 

670 

And yet how easily things go right, 
If the sigh and the kiss of the Winter's night 
Come deep from the soul, in the stronger ray 
That is born in the light of the Winter's day. 

671 

Whom first we love, you know, we seldom wed. 

Time rules us all. And life, indeed, is not 
The thing we planned it out ere hope was dead. 

And then, we women cannot choose our lot. 






198 Prize Selections. 

672 

Beating into the harbor, 
When the cloud-dimmed sun is low, 
And over the stormy waters 
The gull and the petrel go ; 
With sails all torn and rifted, 
And cordage wrecked and gone, 
The worn ship seeks a haven — 
Dismantled, spent, forlorn. 



673 

" Ho, there ! fisherman, hold your hand ! 

Tell me what is that far aw r ay — 
There, where over the Isle of Sand 

Hangs the mist-cloud sullen and gray; 
See ! it rocks with a ghastly life, 

Rising and rolling through clouds of spray, 
Right in the midst of the breakers' strife — 

Tell me, what is it, fisherman, pray ! " 



674 

And I am tired ! — so tired of rigid duty, 
So tired of all my tired hands find to do ! 

I yearn, I faint, for some of life's free beauty, 

Its loose beads with no straight string runnir 
through. 



Prize Selections. 199 

675 
If we knew the woe and heart-ache 

That awaits us on the road ; 
If our lips could taste the wormwood, 

If our backs could feel the load ; 
Would we waste to-day in wishing 

For a time that ne'er may be ; 
Would we wait in such impatience 

For our ships to come from sea ? 

676 
I live among the cold, the false, 

And I must seem like them ; 
And such I am, for I am false 

As those I most condemn. 
I teach my lip its sweetest smile, 

My tongue its softest tone ; 
I borrow others' likeness, till 

Almost I lose my own. 

677 

I hold 
Those lives far nobler that contend and win 
The close, hard fight with beautiful, fierce Sin, 
Than those that go untempted to their graves, 
Deeming the ignorance that haply saves 
Their souls, some splendid wisdom of their own. 



200 



Prize Selections. 






678 
Tempests their furious course may sweep 
Swiftly o'er the troubled deep, 
Darkness may lend her gloomy aid 
And wrap the groaning world in shade ; 
But man can show a darker hour, 
And bend beneath a stronger power; — 
There is a tempest of the Soul, 
A gloom where wilder billows roll. 






679 

I stood at eve, as the" sun. went down, 

By a grave where a woman lies, 
Who lured men's souls to the shores of sin 

With the light of her wanton eyes. 
Who sang the song that the Siren sang 

On the treacherous Durley height, 
Whose face was fair as the summer's day, 

But whose heart was as black as night. 



680 
Though heaven be sweet to win, 
One thing is sweeter yet — freedom to side with hell ! 
In man succeeds or fails this great creative plan ; 
Man's liberty to sin 
Makes worth God's winning the love even God may 
not compel. 



Prize Selections. 201 

681 
Virtue were but a name, if Vice 

Had no dominion here, 
And pleasure none could taste, if pain 

And sorrow were not near. 
The fatal cup all must drain 

Of mingled bliss and woe ; 
Unmixed the cup would tasteless be, 

Or quite forget to flow, 

682 
Better the fire upon thee roll, 
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl, 
Than crucifixion of the soul. 

The road to the Devils before it's made, 
Seems the fairest road that was ever surveyed ; 
The road to the Devil when beaten and trod r 
On the map of the heart, is the Devil's own road. 

684 
Ha! — see where the wild-blazing Grog-Shop appears, 

As the red waves of wretchedness swell, 
How it burns on the edge of tempestuous years 

The horrible Light-House of Hell ! 






202 



Prize Selections. 



6& S 
Better be mum, 
And always dumb 
Than pray with some, — 
Thy Kingdom come \ 
Then vote for rum. 

686 

If on my theme I rightly think, 
There are five reasons why men drink : 
Good wine, a friend, because I'm dry, 
Or lest I should be by and by. 
Or any other reason why. 

687 
How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it, 

As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips ! 
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it 

Though filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips. 



688 
Oh, cursed love of gold ! 
Age follows age, 
And still the world's slow records are unrolled, 
Page after page ; 
And the same tale is told — 
The same unholy deeds, the same sad scenes unfold! 



Prize Selections. 203 

689 
You are coming to woo me, but not as of yore 
When I hastened to welcome your ring at the door ; 
For I trusted that he who stood waiting me then, 
Was the brightest, the truest, the noblest of men. 
Your lips, on my own when they printed " Farewell/' 
Had never been soiled by " the beverage of hell ; " 
But they come to me now with the bacchanal sign, 
And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine. 

690 

A drop, boys, a drop ! and a seed hath been sown — 

Like the upas, ere long that shall spring up on high ! 
A drop, boys, a drop ! and the curse is thine own ; 

Drink, drink, if you will, till the goblet be dry. 
But charge not the folly to God, or to "fate ! " 

No child ever took as a gift from His hand, — 
The loving All-Father — this besom of hate, 

That burns and consumes, and destroys in the land ! 

691 
O sing unto my roundelay ; 

O drop the briny tear with me ; 
Dance no more at holiday, 
Like a running river be ; 
My love is dead, 
Gone to his death-bed, 
All under the willow tree., 



204 



Prize Selections. 






692 

Man's feeble race what ills await, 
Labor and Penury, the racks of Pain, 
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, 

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate ! 

693 

Ambition, Fashion, Show, and Pride, — 

I part from all forever now ; 
Grief, in an overwhelming tide, 

Has taught my haughty heart to bow. 
Poor heart ! distracted, ah, so long — 

And still its aching throb to bear ; 
How broken, that was once so strong ! 

How heavy, once so free from care ! 

694 
By our human weal and woe, 
By our life of toil below, 
By our sorrow and our pain, 
By our hope of heavenly gain, 
By these cherished forms of clay, 
Fading from our sight away, 
Do we plead for light, more light, 
From that world beyond our sight. 

695 
Her smile is sadder than her tears. 



Prize Selections. 205 

696 

Shall we make hot 

The iron of thought, 

And then sit down and forge it not ? 

Alas, the task ! 

The white iron cools ; — 

We are but fools, 

That live, that suffer, and yet ask 

Still, why? 

697 
Yes ! the shores of life are shifting, 

Every year ; 
And we are seaward drifting, 

Every year ; 
Old places, changing, fret us, 
The living more forget us, 
There are fewer to regret us, 

Every year. 

698 

Nothing but leaves ! the spirit grieves 

Over a wasted life ; 
Sins committed while conscience slept, 
Promises made but never kept, 

Hatred, battle, and strife ; 
Nothing but leaves I 



- 



206 Prize Selections. 

699 
On that lone shore loud moans the sea, ■ 
But none, alas, shall mourn for me ! 



700 
Day, in melting purple dying, 
Blossoms, all around me sighing, 
Fragrance from the lilies straying, 
Zephyr, with my ringlets playing, 

Ye but waken my distress : 

I am sick of loneliness. 



701 
'Tis hard to smile when one would weep, 

To speak when one would silent be ; 
To wake when one should wish to sleep, - 

And wake to agony. 

702 
Alas ! 'tis evermore the destiny, 
The hope, heart-cherished, is the soonest lost ; 
The flower first budded soonest feels the frost : 
Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest?. 
And, like the pale star shooting down the sky, 
Look they not ever brightest when they fly 
The desolate home they blessed ? 



Prize Selections. 207 

703 
Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, 
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain : 
And the smile and the tear, and the song and the 

dirge, 
Still follow each other like surge upon surge. 



704 
A wasted grief was never yet recorded. 

705 
Sorrow hath no morrow, 
'Tis born of yesterday. 

706 
There's nought in this life so sweet, 
If man were wise to see't, 
But only melancholy. 

707 
Long did I bear a hard and heavy chain 
Wreathed with amaranth and asphodel, 
But though the flower-wreath stole the weary pain, 
I cast it off and fled, but 'twas in vain ; 
For when once more I passed by where it fell, 
I took it up and bound it on again. 



208 



Prize Selections. 



708 
O, who to sober measurement 

Time's happy swiftness brings, 
When birds of paradise have lent 

Their plumage to his wings ? 






709 
But suffer me to pace 
Round the forbidden place, 

Lingering a minute 
Like outcast spirits who wait 
And see through heaven's gate 

Angels within it. 



710 

The Past is fled and gone, and gone : 
The Past is fled and gone : 
If nought but pain to me remain, 
I'll fare in memory on. 



711 

Methinks all things have travelled since you shined, 
But only Time and clouds, Time's team, have moved ; 

Again foul weather shall not change my mind, 

But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I 
loved. 



Prize Selections. 209 

712 
With this feeling upon me, all feverish and glowing, 

I rushed up the rugged way panting for fame, 
I snatched at my laurels while yet they were growing, 

And won for my guerdon the half of a name. 

7*3 

Vainly we weep and wrestle with our sorrow — 
We cannot see his roads, they lie so broad : 

But his eternal day knows no to-morrow, 
And life and death are all the same to God. 

714 

"Tell me, O cruel Hand," 

Said a grain of corn one day, " 
" Why from the golden sunshine 

You bury me away." 
The silence was relentless, 

No helper came to save ; 
But full ears in the harvest 

A perfect answer gave. 

7i5 

We may be low, we may be poor, 
And think our toil of no account ; 

But it will tell on earth, be sure, 
And God will reckon its amount. 



210 



Prize Selections. 






716 
Is this a dream ? No ! — by the past, 

With its dense darkness — pierced at length, — 
And by the present, — brightening fast, — 

And by the future's noonday's strength, 
Earth's truly great and good shall be 
Her last, best aristocracy. 



717 
Whate'er our prizes, or how fair our crown, 

Or deep our losses, only this is best, — 
The soul's great peace. Nor sneer, nor smile, 
frown 

Can shake it from its rest. 
Exalt thy calling ! On its spotless shield 

Write truth, write honor, valor, first and last. 
Cravens may clutch thy stars, and thou not yield ; 

Love them and hold them fast ! 



nor 



718 
Let the road be long and dreary, 

And its ending out of sight ; 
Foot it bravely, strong or weary, 

Trust in God and do the right. 
Some will hate thee, some will love thee, 

Some will flatter, some will slight ; 
Turn from man and look above thee ; 

Trust in God and do the right. 



Prize Selections. 211 

719 

In service which Thy will appoints, 

There are no bonds for me ; 
For my inmost heart is taught the truth 

That makes Thy children free : 
And a life of self-renouncing love 

Is a life of liberty. 

720 
But the proud tree stands up prouder, 

While its branches cast their leaves — 
And the cold wind whispers louder, 

Like a sobbing breath that grieves ; 
A heart that's long in breaking, 

As a single flower may cling, 
All withered, shorn, and quaking, 

On the naked stalk till spring. 

721 

Better than grandeur, better than gold, 
Than rank and title a thousandfold, 
Is a healthy body, a mind at ease, 
And simple pleasures that always please ; 
A heart that can feel for a neighbor's woe 
And share his joys with a genial glow, — 
With sympathies large enough to enfold 
All men as brothers, — is better than gold. 






212 



Prize Selections. 



722 
Truth and error are but darkly 

Understood. 
Each may hold a little measure 

Of the Kght, 
Each may give his little treasure 

Labelled right ; 
But the eternal search remaineth 

Ours to find 
Loftier and still loftier Pisgahs 

Of the mind. 

723 
For the dead are the living — the living the dead, 
And out of the darkness the light is shed ; 
And the East is West, and the West is East, 
And the sun from his toil of day released, 
Shines back through the Golden Gate. 



724 
The course of the weariest river 

Ends in the great gray sea ; 
The acorn forever and ever 

Strives upward to the tree ; 
The rainbow, the sky adorning, 

Shines promise through the storm ; 
The glimmer of coming morning 

Through midnight gloom will form. 



Prize Selections. 213 

725 
Once a rose ever a rose, we say : 
One we loved and who loved us 
Remains beloved though gone from day: 
To human hearts it must be thus, 
The past is sweetly laid away. 
Sere and seal'd for a day and year, 
Smell them, dear Christina ! pray : 
So Nature treats its. children dear, 
So memory deals with yesterday : 
The past is sweetly laid away. 



726 
Roses shall bloom again, 
Sweet love will come again : 
It will be summer time, by and by. 



727 
A cloud lay cradled near the setting sun, 

A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow : 
Long had I watched the glory moving on 

O'er the still radiance of the lake below. 

Tranquil its spirit seemed, and floated slow ! 
Even in its very motion there was rest ; 

While every breath of eve that chanced to blow 
Wafted the traveller to the beauteous West. 






214 Prize Selections. 

728 
If yon bright stars which gem the night 

Be each a blissful dwelling sphere ; 
Where kindred spirits reunite, 

Whom death hath torn asunder here ; 
How sweet it were at once to die, 

And leave this blighted orb afar — 
Mixed soul with soul, to cleave the sky, 

And soar away from star to star. 

729 

There lies between man's silence and his speech 
A shadowy valley, where thro' those who pass 
Are never silent, tho' they may not speak ; 
And yet they more than breathe. It is the vale 
Of wordless sighs, half uttered and half heard. 
It is the vale of the unutterable. 
We walked between our silence and our speech, 
And sighed between the sunset and the stars 
One hour beside the sea. 



73o 
Oh glorious gift of brotherhood ! 
Oh sweet elixir of the blood 
That makes us live' with those long dead, 
Or hope for those that shall be bred 
Hereafter ! 



Prize Selections. 215 

God took my mother's voice and spoke, 
And sights and sounds came back and things long 

since, 
And all my childhood found me on the hills. 

732 
There are spots that bear no flowers, — 

Not because the soil is bad, 
But that summer's gentle showers 

Never made their bosoms glad. 
Better have an act that's kindly 

Treated sometimes with disdain, 
Than, by judging others blindly, 

Doom the innocent to pain. 

733 

Nor peace nor ease the heart can know, 

Which, like the needle true, 
Turns at the touch of joy or woe, 

But, turning, trembles too. 

734 

Forgive and forget! — why, the world would be lonely, 
The garden a wilderness left to deform, 

If the flowers but remember'd the chilling w T inds only, 
And the fields gave no verdure for fear of the storm. 






2i6 Prize Selections. 

735 
Oh ! there be men and women who ne'er owned 
Of thy full measured blessings even a tithe : 
Whose natural wants, health, money, friends denied, 
Might well have sapped the core of sweet content, 
And caused them pine, and fret, and weep for change - 
Who yet go almost singing on their way : 
Such music patience makes in great meek souls. 



736 
The fairest action of our human life 

Is scorning to revenge an injury ; 
For who forgives without a further strife, 

His adversary's heart to him doth tie. 
And 'tis a firmer conquest truly said, 
To win the heart, than overthrow the head. 



737 
If men were wise in little things — 

Affecting less in all their dealings ; 
If hearts had fewer rusted strings 

To isolate their kindred feelings ; 
If men, when Wrong beats down the Right, 

Would strike together to restore it, — 
If Right made Might in every fight, 

The world would be the better for it. 



Prize Selections. 217 

738 
Only a word ! 
But sharper, oh, sharper than a two-edged sword 

To pierce and sting and scar 
The heart whose peace a breath of blame could mar. 

739 
Oh ! ye who love, beware lest thorns 

Across Love's path ye fling : 
Ye little know what misery 

From idle words may spring. 

740 

It is a little thing to speak a phrase 

Of common comfort which by daily use 

Has almost lost its sense ; yet on the ear 

Of him who thought to die unmourned 'twill fall 

Like choicest music, fill the glazing eye 

With gentle tears, relax the knotted hand 

To know the bonds of fellowship again, 

And shed on the departing soul a sense 

More precious than the benison of friends 

About the honored death-bed of the rich. 

74i 

The poor man alone, 
, When he hears the poor moan, 
Of his morsel a morsel will give. 



218 



Prize Selections. 



742 
Speak gently ! 'tis a little thing, 

Dropped in the heart's deep well ; 
The good, the joy, that it may bring 

Eternity shall tell. 

743 
Of all the ways that wisest men could find 
To mend the age, and mortify mankind, 
Satire well writ has most successful proved, 
And cures, because the remedy is loved. 

744 

No tax is gratitude ; 
It is the bounteous harvest of the heart 
In which was sown, from friendly open hand, 
That benefit the sower soon forgot. 
Gratitude ? it is love's own memory. 



745 
Ho, gentle maiden ! that in warm and lighted rooms 

displayst 
The naked arm, the naked throat, the almost naked 

breast! 
Hast thou no angel-charity, no kindness to fulfil 
For those on whom this winter storm beats down more 

naked still ? 



Prize Selections. 219 

746 

An archer shot an arrow in the dark, 

And laughed, " Tis but an arrow thrown away ; " 
But when he sported forth at dawn of day, 

He found his brother lying stiff and stark. 

747 
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, 

Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, 
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span ; 

Oh ! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store. 

748 
There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot, — 
To the churchyard a pauper is going, I wot ; 
The road is rough, and the hearse has no springs ; 
And hark to the dirge which the mad driver sings : 

Rattle his bones over the stones / 

He's only a pauper whom nobody owns I 

749 
Have ye given of your purple to cover ? 
Have ye given of your gold to cheer ? 
Have ye given of your love, as a lover 
Might cherish the bride he held dear ? 
Broken the sacrament bread to feed 
Souls and bodies in uttermost need ? 






220 



Prize Selections, 



75° 
That man may last, but never lives, 
Who much receives, but nothing gives ; 
Whom none can love, whom none can thank, 
Creation's blot, creation's blank. 



75i 
Wouldst thou from sorrow find a sweet relief ? 

Or is thy heart oppressed with woes untold ? 
Balm wouldst thou gather from corroding grief ? — 

Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold. 

'Tis when the rose is wrapped in many a fold 
Close to its heart, the worm is wasting there 

Its life and beauty ; not, when all unrolled, 
Leaf after leaf, its bosom rich and fair 
Breathes freely its perfume throughout the ambient air. 



75 2 
Ah, look within ! Without, the world is fair, 
And you are all in love with solitude ; 
Yet look within : Evil and Pain are there. 
Look, ye who say Life best is understood 
Where greenish light falls dappling the moss-floored 

wood, 
Look at the dumb brute souls who suffer and strive ; — 
Leave the dead world, and make their souls alive. 



Prize Selections. 221 

753 
Oh, what is the song that the winter winds sing, 
As earth they are robing with snows that they bring 
From the crystalline realms of the stern ice-king ? 
" Oh, pity the poor ! oh, pity the poor ! " 

754 
The best love man can offer 

To the God of love, be sure, 
Is kindness to his little ones, 

And bounty to his poor. 

755 
In all this earth there is not one 
So desolate and so undone, 
Who hath not rescue if they knew 
A heart-cry goes the whole world through. 

756 
It seems a possibility unguessed — > 

Or little borne in mind, if haply known — 
That he who cheers in trouble all the rest 

May now and then have troubles of his own. 
Alas ! God know 7 s, he has his foe to fight, 

His closet-atomy, severe and grim ; 
All others claim his comfort as of right, 

But, hapless parson ! who shall comfort him ? 



222 



Prize Selections, 



757 
" God bless us every one ! " prayed Tiny Tim, 

Crippled, and dwarfed, of body, yet so tall 
Of soul, we tiptoe earth to look on him, 

High towering over all. 
He loved the loveless world, nor dreamed, indeed, 

That it, at best, could give to him, the while, 
But pitying glances, when his only need 
Was but a cheery smile. 

75S 
Danger, long travel, want, or woe, 
Soon change the form that best we know — 
For deadly fear can time outgo, 

And blanch at once the hair ; 
Hard toil can roughen form and face, 
And want can quench the eye's bright grace, 
Nor does old age a wrinkle trace 

More deeply than despair. 



759 

How sweet and gracious, even in common speech, 
Is that fine sense which men call Courtesy ! 
Wholesome as air and genial as the light, 
Welcome in every clime as breath of flowers, — 
It transmutes aliens into trusting friends, 
And gives its owner passport round the globe. 



Prize Selections. 223 

760 
Below lies one whose name was traced in sand — 
He died, not knowing what it was to live : 
Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood 
And maiden thought electrified his soul : 
Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. 
Pass without a sigh, bewildered reader, 
In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God, 
In other kingdoms of a sweeter air; 
In Eden every flower is blown. — Amen. 



761 
There is no calm like that when storm is done ; 

There is no pleasure keen as pain's release ; 

There is no joy that lies so deep as peace, 
No peace so deep as that by struggle won. 

762 

And I learn 'tis best in all things to hold living very 
lightly, 

Taste the perfumes of the fir-wood, but not linger 
there too long, 

Lest the mazes of the forest lead to foulnesses un- 
sightly, 

And a haunting horror clash upon the night-bird's 
liquid song. 



224 Prize Selections. 

763 
i For the base is food for laughter, 

And the evil only base, 
And if virtue lead, thereafter 

Can follow no disgrace : 
Not in the raiment's measure 
Dwells Temperance the treasure, 
But in him whom pain nor pleasure, 

Can move not from his place. 

764 
And sweet Experience proves as years increase, 
That wisdom's ways are pleasantness and peace. 

76S 
True happiness had no localities, 
No tones provincial, no peculiar garb. 
Where duty went, she went ; with justice went; 
And went with meekness, charity and love. 

766 * 
True — there are books and books. There's Gray, 

For instance, and there's Bacon ; 
There Longfellow, and Monstrelet, 

And also Colton's " Lacon," 
With "Laws of Whist," and those of Libel, 
And Euclid, and the Mormon Bible. 






Prize Selections. 225 

767 
In torrid heats of late July, 
In March, beneath the bitter fo'se, 
He book-hunts while the loungers fly, — 
He book-hunts, though December freeze ; 
In breeches bagged at the knees, 
And heedless of the public jeers, 
For these, for these, he hoards his fees, — 
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs. 

768 
1 How weak are words — to carry thoughts like mine ! ' 
Saith each dull daughter round the much bored Nine. 
Yet words sufficed for Shakspeare's suit when he 
Woo'd Time, and won instead Eternity. 

769 
As, when a beauteous nymph decays, 
We say, she's past her dancing days ; 
So poets lose their feet by time, 
And can no longer dance in rhyme. 

770 
My muse and I, ere youth and spirits fled, 

Sat up together many a night, no doubt ; 
But now I've sent the poor old lass io bed, 

Simply because my fire is going out. 



226 



Prize Selections. 



771 
Come hither and listen, whoever 

Would learn from our page the miracle 
Of passing for witty and clever 

Without being voted satirical ! 
He'd better be apt with his pen, 

Than well-dressed and well-booted and gloved, 
Who likes to be liked by the men, 

By the women who loves to be loved. 

772 
Tell me, dear Thalia, what you think. 

Your nerves have undergone a sudden shock ; 
Your poor dear spirits have begun to sink : 

On Banstead Downs you'd muster a new stock ; 
And I'd be sure to keep away from drink, 

And always go to bed by twelve o'clock. 
We'll travel down there in the morning stages ; 
Our verses shall go down to distant ages. 



773 
Oh, if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, 

And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, 
Could be furled together, this genial weather, 

And carted, or carried, or wafted away, 
Nor ever again trotted out — ah me ! 
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be ! 



Prize Selections. 227 

774 
Alas for human happiness ! 

Alas for human sorrow ! 
Our yesterday is nothingness — 

What else will be our morrow ? 
Still Beauty must be stealing hearts, 

And Knavery stealing purses ; 
Still cooks must live by making tarts, 

And wits by making verses. 

775 
So have I heard on Afric's burning shore 
A hungry lion give a grievous roar ; 
The grievous roar echoed along the shore. 

So have I heard on Afric's burning shore 

Another lion give a grievous roar, 

And the first lion thought the last a bore. 

776 

Old Time and I, the other night, had a carouse to- 
gether; 

The wine was golden, warm, and bright, — aye, just 
like summer weather. 

Quoth I, " Here's Christmas come again, and I no 
farthing richer ; " 

Time answered, " Ah ! the old, old strain ! — I prithee 
pass the pitcher." 






228 Prize Selections. 

777 
I will tell, as I am bidden ! 
Poetry cannot be hidden. 
Fire may smoulder, love be dead; 
But a poem must be read. 
Song intoxicates the Poet ; 
He will sing it, he will show it. 
He must show it, he must sing it. 
Tell the fellow then to bring it ! 
Though he knows you can't abide it, 
'Tis impossible to hide it. 
I will tell, as I am bidden, — 
Poems never can be hidden. 



778 
When first the warmer weather brought these people 
all together, 
And the crowds began to thicken through the Row, 
I reclined against the railing on a sunny day, inhal- 
ing 
All the spirits that the breezes could bestow. 
And the riders and the walkers and the thinkers and 
the talkers 
Left me lonely in the thickest of the throng, 
Not a touch upon my shoulder — not a nod from one 
beholder — 
As the stream of Art and Nature went along. 



Prize Selections. 229 

779 
Roll on, thou ball, roll on ! 
Through seas of inky air 

Roll on ! 
It's true I've got no shirts to wear ; 
It's true my butcher's bill is due ; 
It's true my prospects all look blue — 
But don't let that unsettle you ! 
Never you mind ! 

Roll on ! [// rolls on. 

• 780 
In the big masquerade 

Of pretension and pelf. 
You are sure to be laid 
Very soon on the shelf, 
If you have the audacious candor to appear represent- 
ing Yourself. 

781 
If wit were always radiant, 

And wine were always iced, 
And bores were kicked out straightway 
Through a convenient gateway ; 
Then down the year's long gradient 

'Twere sad to be enticed, 
If wit were always radiant, 

And wine were always iced. 






H 

230 Prize Selections, 

782 
Bachelor's Hall ! what a quare-lookin' place it is ! 

Kape me from sich all the days of my life ! 
Sure, but I think what a burnin' disgrace it is 

Never at all to be gettin' a wife. 



783 
Is it true, then, my girl ? did you mean it — 

The word spoken yesterday night ? 
Does that hour seem so sweet, now between it 

And this has come day's sober light ? 
Have you woke from a moment of rapture 

To remember, regret, and repent, 
And to hate, perchance, him who has trapped your 

Unthinking consent ? 

784 
Tell thee truth, sweet ; no. 
Truth is cross and sad and cold; 

Lies are pitiful and kind, 
Honey-soft as Love's own tongue : 
Let me, love, lie so. 
Lies are like a summer wind, 
Wooing flower-buds to unfold. 

Lies will last while men are young. 
Tell thee truth, love ; no. 



Prize Selections. 231 

Her lips were so near 
That — what else could I do ? 
You'll be angry, I fear, 
But her lips were so near — 
Well, I can't make it clear, 
Or explain it to you, 
But — her lips were so near 
That — what else could I do? 

786 
Yet sometimes in my opera-stall 
A voice will ring upon my ear, 
A sudden chord will thrill thro' all 
My being, and I feel a tear 

Dimming my eye, a tribute paid 
To those old days when Nell's head laid 
And nestled on my breast. 

What lies there now ? a load of care, 
The cambric-fronted shirt I wear, 
And black embroidered vest. 

787 
Stolen sweets are always sweeter : 
Stolen kisses much completer ; 
Stolen looks are nice in chapels : 
Stolen, stolen be your apples. 






232 Prize Selections. 

788 
Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen ; 

Here's to the widow of fifty ; 
Here's to the flaunting extravagant queen, 
And here's to the housewife that's thrifty. 
Let the toast pass, 
Drink to the lass, 
I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass. 

789 
Och, girls, did you ever hear, 

I wrote my love a letter ? 
And altho' he cannot read 

Sure I thought 'twas all the better, 
For why should he be puzzled 

Wid hard spellin' in the matter, 
When the maneing is so plaine 

That I love him faithfully ? 

790 
Jenny kissed me when we met, 

Jumping from the chair she sat in ; 
Time, you thief, who love to get 

Sweets into your list, put that in : 
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, 

Say that health and wealth have missed me, 
Say I'm growing old, but add, 

Jenny kissed me. 



Prize Selections. 2$$ 

791 

A practical, plain young girl ; 
Not-af raid-of-the-rain young girl ; 

A poetical posy, 

A ruddy-and-rosy, 
A helper-of-self young girl. 
At-home-in-her-place young girl ; 
A never-will-lace young girl ; 

A toiler serene, 

A life pure and clean, 
A princess-of-peace young girl. 

792 

My love and I for kisses play'd : 

She would keep stakes — I was content; 
But when I won she would be paid ; 
This made me ask her what she meant. 
"Pray, since I see," quoth she, "your wrangling vein, 
Take your own kisses, give me mine again." 

793 

A lovely young lady I mourn in my rhymes : 

She was pleasant, good-natured, and civil sometimes, 

Her figure was good : she had very fine eyes, 

And her talk was a mixture of foolish and wise. 

Her adorers were many, and one of them said, 

" She waltzed rather well ! it's a pity she's dead ! " 






234 Prize Selections. 

794 

No, I will not say good-by — 
Not good-by, nor anything. 

He is gone. ... I wonder why 

Lilacs are not sweet this spring? — 
How that tiresome bird will sing ! 

795 
Yo' kin nebber cl'ar de fores' wid a common carton' 

knife, 
Nor expec' to make a liben courtin' ob yo' nabor's 

wife. 
Dar's no shorter road to heaben dan to do de bes' we 

kin: 
Dar's no surer way ob failin' dan to nebber try agin. 
Yo' cayn't do a squar' day's cartin' if yo' stop yo' mule 

to wait 
Fur de Lawd to sen' an angel jes' to open up de gate. 

796 
When we want, we have for our pains 

The promise that if we but wait 
Till the want has burned out of our brains 

Every means shall be present to state ; 
While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold, 
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old, 
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold, 

And everything comes too late — too late ! 



Prize Selections. 235 

797 
Step in, pray, Sir Toby, my picture is here, — 
Do you think that 'tis like ? does it strike you ? 

Why, it does not as yet ; but I fancy, my dear, 
In a moment it will — 'tis so like you ! 



798 
Now, I's got a notion in my head dat when you come 

to die, 
An' stan' de 'zamination in de Cote-house in de sky, 
You'll be 'stonished at de questions dat de angel's 

gwine to ax 
When he gits you on de witness-stan' an' pin you to de 

f ac's ; 
'Cause he'll ax you mighty closely 'bout your doin's in 

de night, 
An' de water-milion question's gwine to bodder you a 

sight ! 

799 
O strange indifference ! low and high 

Drowsed over common joys and cares ; 
The earth was still, but knew 7 not why, 

The world was listening unawares. 
How calm a moment may precede 

One that shall thrill the world forever ! 



m 



236 Prize Selections. 

800 
I don't go much on religion, 

I never ain't had no show ; 
But I've got a middlin' tight grip, sir, 

On the handful o' things I know. 
I don't pan out on the prophets 

And free will, and that sort of thing, — 
But I b'lieve in God and the angels, 

Ever since one night last spring. 

801 

I had two friends — two glorious friends — two better 
could not be, 

And every night, when midnight tolls, they meet to 
laugh with me. 

The first was shot by Carlist thieves — ten years ago in 
Spain. 

The second drowned near Alicante — while I alive re- 
main. 

802 
He that spendeth much, 

And getteth nought ; 
He that oweth much, 

And hath nought ; 
He that looketh in his purse 

And findeth nought, — 
He may be sorry, 

And say nought. 



Prize Selections, 237 

803 
Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, 

Where'er his stages may have been, 
May sigh to think he still has found 

His warmest welcome at an inn. 

804 
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, 
My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee : 
Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 

805 
Nature denied him much, 
But gave him at his birth what most he values — 
A passionate love for music, sculpture, painting, 
For poetry, the language of the gods, 
For all things here, or grand or beautiful, 
A setting sun, a lake amid the mountains, 
The light of an ingenious countenance — 
And what transcends them all, a noble action. 

806 
Westward the course of empire takes its way ; 

The four first acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; 

Time's noblest offspring is the last. 



238 



Prize Selections. 



807 
How like a mounting devil in the heart 
Rules the unrein'd ambition ! Let it once 
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow 
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought 
And unthrones peace forever. Putting on 
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns 
The heart to ashes, and with not a spring 
Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip, 
We look upon our splendor and forget 
The thirst of which we perish ! 

808 
Pride, the first peer and president of Hell. 

809 
There is a kind of pride, a decent dignity 
Due to ourselves, which, spite of our misfortunes, 
May be maintained and cherished to the last. 

810 
Strange cozenage ! None would live past years again ; 
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain. 



811 



Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many, 
But yet she never gave enough to any. 



Prize Selections. 239 

812 
Son, think not thy money-purse bottom to burn, 
But keep it for profit to serve thine own turn : 
A fool and his money be soon at debate, 
Which after, with sorrow, repents him too late. 

813 
Experience, join'd with common sense, 
To mortals is a providence. 

814 
When the judgment's weak, the prejudice is strong. 

815 

Who hath endur'd the whole can bear each part. 

816 

Either extreme, of love or hate, 
Is sweeter than a calm estate. 

817 

Thou gentle nurse of pleasing woe, 

To thee from crowds, and noise, and show, 

With eager haste I fly ; 
Thrice welcome, friendly Solitude, 
Oh let no busy foot intrude, 

Nor listening ear be nigh ! 






240 



Prize Selections. 



818 

Only waiting till the shadows 

Are a little longer grown, 
Only waiting till the glimmer 

Of the day's last beam is flown ; 
Till the night of earth is faded 

From the heart once full of day ; 
Till the stars of Heaven are breaking 

Through the twilight soft and gray. 

819 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars a cage ; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for a hermitage : 
If I have freedom in my love, 

And in my soul am free, — 
Angels alone that soar above 

Enjoy such liberty. 



820 

I feign not friendship where I hate ; 

I fawn not on the great (in show) ; 
I prize, I praise a mean estate, — 

Neither too lofty nor too low : 
This, this is all my choice, my cheer, — 
A mind content, a conscience clear. 



Prize Selections. 241 

821 

I am content with what I have, 

Little be it or much ; 
And, Lord ! contentment still I crave, 

Because Thou savest such. 
Fulness to such a burden is, 

That go on pilgrimage ; - 
Here little, and hereafter bliss, 

Is best from age to age. 



822 
How happy is he born and taught 

That serveth not another's will, 
Whose armor is his honest thought, 

And simple truth his utmost skill ! 



823 
A cottage lone and still, 

With bowers nigh, 
Shadowy, my woes to still, 

Until I die. 
Such pearl from Life's fresh crown 
Fain would I shake me down. 
Were dreams to have at will, 
This would best heal my ill, 

This would I buy. 






242 



Prize Selections. 



824 

Give me my scallop shell of quiet, 
My staff of truth to walk upon, 
My scrip of joy — immortal diet, 
My bottle of salvation ; 
My gown of glory, hope's true gauge ; 
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage — 
While my soul, like a quiet palmer, 
Travelleth towards the land of heaven. 

825 

The impartialest satire that ever was seen, 
That speaks truth without fear, or flattery, or spleen ; 
Read as you list, commend it, or come mend it; 
The man that penn'd it did with Finis end it. 



F I N I S. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



23 
24 

25 
26 

27 
28 
29 
30 
31 
32 
33 
34 
35 
36 
37 
38 
39 
40 
41 
42 
43 
44 
45 
46 



John Gay. 

W. H. VenabJe. 

Alfred Tennyson. 

Samuel Butler. 

Austin Dobson. 

George Herbert. 

Henry Abbey. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 

lsabeile Craig Knox. 

Helen Hunt Jackson. 

Louise Imogen Guiney. 

Ina D. Coolbrith. 

Elizabeth Oakes Smith. 

William Girlord. 

Chauncey Hare Townshend. 

Amy Levy. 

Arthur O'Shaugnessy. 

E. Norman Gunnison. 

James Thomson. 

Chas. H. Noyes. 

Richard Gifford. 

Anna C. Lynch Botta. 

Henry Niles Pierce. 

Mary Chamberlain Wveth. 

(Ethel Gray.) 
Philip J. Bailey. 
Carl Spencer. 
W. F. Fox. 
Jean Ingelow. 
Lord Byron. 
Edgar Allen Poe. 
David A. Wasson. 
Adeline D. T. Whitney. 
Bayard Taylor. 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
Robert Southey. 
J. Stanyan Bigg. 
William Cowper. 
John Stuart Blackie. 
William Wordsworth. 
Robert Browning. 
Henry W. Longfellow. 
Catherine Talbot. 
Robert Herrick. 
James Shirley. 
May Riley Smith. 
Christina G. Rossetti. 



The Shepherd and the Philosopher, 

Dedication to Melodies of the Heart. 

The Princess. 

Satire on Plagiaries. 

Postscriptum to the Ballad of I nidation. 

The Church Porch. 

A Morning Pastoral. 

The Sonnet. Poet and His Master. 

Ode on the Centenary of Burns. 

To O. W. Holmes on His 70th Birthday. 

Brother Bartholemew. 

The Poet. 

Poesy. 

The Baviad. 

On Poetry. 

A Minor Poet. 

Song of a Fellow Worker. 

Broken Strings. 

Shelley. A Poem. 

The Prodigal to the Earth. 

Contemplation. 

Thoughts in a Library. 

Beauty Born of Sorrow. 

The Poet's Crown. 

Proem to Festus. 

Half-heard. 

Our Sweet Unexpressed. 

Afternoon at a Parsonage. 

Manfred. 

For Annie. 

Seen and Unseen. 

Twofold. 

Metempsychosis of the Pine. 

To a Skylark. 

The Library. 

Night and the Soul. 

Alexander Selkirk. 

Anaxagoras. 

To a Child. Lines written in an Album. 

Pippa Passes. 

The Ladder of St. Augustine. 

The Importance of Early Risinsr. 

Upon the Bishop of Lincoln's Imprisonment. 

The Traitor. 

If We Knew. 

Golden Silences. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



47 Mollie E. Moore Davis. 

48 Ellen Sturgis Hooper. 

49 George Howland. 

50 Newman Hall. 

51 Albert Laighton. 

52 Alice Williams Brotherton. 

53 Nora Perry. 

54 Caroline A. Mason. 

55 Eugene Lee Hamilton. 

56 Frances Sargent Osgood. 

57 Robert Southwell. 

58 Thomas W. Handford. 

59 John Sullivan Dwight. 

60 Samuel Johnson. 

61 Hannah K. Hudson. 

62 Abraham Cowley. 

63 Anson G. Chester. 

64 John Barbour. 

65 Charlote Fiske Bates. 

66 Henry W. Longfellow. 

67 Samuel Lanman Blanchard. 

68 George Eliot. 

69 Erastus W. Ellsworth. 

70 William Shurtlefr". 

71 Christopher Pearse Cranch. 

72 E. H. Plumptre (Rev.) 

73 Duncan McGregor. 

74 Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 

75 John Skinner. 

76 Anna Letitia Barbauld. 

77 Horatius Bonar. 

78 Richard Realf. # 

79 Frank M. Imbrie. 

80 Charles Mackay. 

81 Charles DeKay. 

82 Frederick W. Faber. 

83 Alexander Smith. 

84 
«5 
86 

87 
88 
89 
90 

91 
92 

93 
94 
95 
96 

97 



Edward Young. 
James Dodds. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
Lucy Larcom. 
William Shakespeare. 
Benjamin Stillingfleet. 
Arthur Murphy. 
Park Benjamin. 
Dr. John Brown. 
Ethel Lynn Beers. 
S. P. Putnam. 
Clara Jessop Moore. 
Charlotte Smith. 
John Norris. 



Going Out and Coming In. 
Life, a Duty. 

(Borrowed from Isabelle Craig Knox.) 
Fading. 

Life is Wasted. 
The Mystery. 
The Falling Star. 
Unattained. 
Be Like the Sun. 
The Phantom Ship. 
Laborare est orare. 
Times go by Turns/ 
Work is Worship. 
True Rest. 
Winter, an Ode. 
A Poem. 
Davideis. 

The Tapestry Weavers. 
Bruce's Apostrophe to Freedom. 
Satisfied. 
Autumn. 
Hidden Joy. 
The Spanish Gypsey. 
What is the Use. 
The Way. 
Old and Young. 
A Plaster Cast from Pompeii. 
Clouds and Sunshine. 
The Fault of the Age. 
A Song on the Times. 
Ye are the Salt of the Earth. 
The Masters Touch. 
Indirection. 
Blending. 
Clear the Way. 
Hesperus. 

The Right must Win. 
Sonnet. I cannot deem why Men toil so 

for Fame. 
Night Thoughts. 
Sonnet. Craigcrook. 
Each and All. 
Shared. 
Hamlet. 

Essay on Conversation, Courtesy. 
Zenobia. 
Press on. 
Barbarossa. 
A Little While. 
Prometheus. 
The Web of Life. 

Elgiac Sonnets. The Close of Spring. 
The Parting. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



98 

99 
100 

101 
102 
103 

104 

105 

106 

107 
108 

109 

no 
III 

112 
113 
114 
115 
Il6 

117 



Chas. Tennyson Turner. 

Henry Delaune. 

George W. Bethune. 

Philip Doddridge. 

Mark Akenside. 

Richard Chenevix Trench. 

Charlotte Bronte. 

Joaquin Miller. 

Samuel Miller Hageman. 

A. A. Hopkins. 

Philip Garth. 

Richard Moncton Milnes. 

(Lord Houghton.) 
M. G. Brainard. 
Henry A. Beers. 
William Alexander. 
Robert Nugent (Earl Nugent' 
Edna Dean Proctor. 
Samuel William Partridge. 
Rachel Pomeroy. 
Cradock Newton. 



118 Chidiock Tychborn. 

119 Sir John Denham. 

120 Samuel Miller Waring. 
i2i Robert T. Conrad. 

122 Alison Rutherford Cockburn. 

123 Charles Fenno Hoffman. 

124 Mary Woolsey Howland. 

125 George William Curtis. 

126 Harriet Winslow Sewall. 

127 Elenora Louisa Hervey. 

128 James Beattie. 

129 F. B. Sanborn. 

130 Thomas Percy. 

131 Henry Kirke White. 

132 Sarah J. Lippincott. 
(Grace Greenwood.) 

133 Sarah K. Bolton. 

134 Cornelius George Fenner. 

135 Harriet Martineau. 

136 Michael Wigglesworth. 

137 Stephen Henry Thayer. 

138 James K. Lombard. 

139 Mrs. Louisa S. McCord. 

140 James Ballantyne. 

141 G. Linnaus Banks. 

142 Evangeline M. Johnson. 

143 Hiram Rich. 

144 Paul Pawnor. 

145 Andrews Norton. 

146 Martin Farquhar Tupper. 

147 Eliza Cook. 



Silkworms and Spiders. 

Epigram. 

Live to do Good. 

Epigram on His Family Arms. 

Hymn to Science. 

Retribution. 

The Teacher's Monologue. 

Down into the Dust. 

Silence. 

L' Envoi to Waifs and Their Authors. 

Change. 

Pleasure and Pain. 

Music. 

Carcamon. 

Waves and Leaves. 

Ode to William Puttenary. 

Our H-eroes. 

Not to Myself Alone. 

God's Acre. 

Wonderland. 

Verses written by one in the Tower being 

young yet condemned to die. 
Cooper's Hili. 
P ead Thou My Cause. 
The Pride of Worth. 
The Flowers of the Forest. 
The Blighted Heart. 
Requiescam. 
Major and Minor. 
Why Thus Longing. 
Be Still, be Still, poor Human Heart. 
The Minstrel. 
Anathemata. 

The Friar of Orders Gray. 
To an Early Primrose. 

The Poet of To-Day. 

Paddle Your Own Canoe. 

Gulf Weed. 

Song for August. 

Meat out of the Eater. 

At Length. 

Not as though I had already Attained. 

Caius Gracchus. 

Ilka Blade o' Grass Keps its ain Drap o 'Dew, 

What I Live for. 

For My Sake. 

In the Sea. 

God's Will and Mine. 

The Close of the Year. 

Proverbial Philosophy. 

The World. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



14S Harriet W. Preston. 

149 Clinton Scollard. 

150 George Peele. 

151 John Mason. 

152 Simon Wastell. 
J 53 John Dyer. 

154 Bishop Henshaw. 

155 James Merrick. 

156 Robert Dodsley. 

157 Henry King. 

158 Benjamin F. Taylor. 

159 Bryan Waller Procter. 

(Barry Cornwall.) 

160 Jane Welsh Carlyle. 

161 Minot J. Savage. 

162 Charles Warren Stoddard. 

163 Henry Neele. 

164 Frederick Locker. 

165 Lord Francis Bacon. 

166 John Quincy Adams. 

167 Philip Freneau. 

168 Charles Sprague. 

169 John Go frey Saxe. 

170 George D. Prentice. 

171 Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges. 

172 Samuel Garth. 

173 Robert Blair. 

174 George Darley. 

175 J. L. McCreery. 

176 Frederick Tennyson. 

177 Henry Luttrell. 

178 Michael J. Barry. 

179 Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 

180 Theodore Tilton. 

181 William Henry Furness. 

182 R. R. Bowker. 

183 William Cullen Bryant. 

184 Col. John A. Joyce. 

185 E. H. Parker. 

186 Mary Mapes Dodge. 

187 Mary E. Brooks. 

188 Charles Dickens. 

189 Kate B. W. Barnes. 

190 Rose H. Thorpe. 

191 Nancy A. W. Priest Wakefield 

192 Mrs. S. T. Perry. 

193 Dinah Mulock Craik. 

194 Sir John Bowring. 

195 William H. Burleigh. 

196 Elzabeth Akers Allen 

197 Robert Buchanan. 

198 William Morris. 

199 Frank Lee Benedict. 



The Survivors. 

Snowflake in May. 

Sonnet. Polyhymnia. 

Song of Praise for the Evening. 

Man's Mortality. 

Grongor Hill. 

Horas Succisiv^. 

The Wish. 

Song. 

Life. A Dirge. 

Isle of Long Ago. 

Life. 

Hope. 

The Mystic Hope. 

A Rhyme of Life. 

Moan, Moan, ye dying Gales. 

Bramble- Rise. 

The World. 

The Hour-glass. 

The Wild Honeysuckle. 

To My Cigar. 

Life's Story. 

The Closing Year. 

On the Death of Sir Walter Scott. 

The Dispensary. 

Death of the Strong Man. 

Ethelstan. 

There is no Death. 

The Golden City. 

Death. 

The Place to Die. 

An Untimely Thought. 

In God's Acre. 

She is not Dead, but Sleepeth. 

Life. 

The Flood of Years. 

Unknown. 

On Burial of Garfield. 

The Two Mysteries. 

Weep not for the Dead. 

Old Curiosity Shop. 

The Departed. 

Waiting. 

Over the River. 

Are all the Children in? 

The Three Meetings. 

God and Heaven. 

Requiem. 

The City of the Living. 

Poet Andrew. 

The Earthly Paradise. 

In Memoriam. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



200 Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

201 Henry Burton. 

202 William D. Gallagher. 

203 Hartley Coleridge. 

204 Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney. 

205 James Montgomery. 

206 Kate Seymour McLean. 

207 Thomas Tickeii. 

208 Dr. John Arbuthnot. 

209 James G. Clarke. 

210 Dora Reed Goodale. 

211 Ellice Hopkins. 

212 Richard Harris Barham. 

213 Joseph Addison. 

214 William Roscoe. 

215 William Somerville. 

216 John Vance Cheney. * 

217 Richard Henry Dana. 

218 Ophelia G. Browning. 

219 John A. Symonds. 

220 Thomas Aird. 

221 Anna Katherine Green. 

222 Charlotte Elliott. 

223 Rev. R. S. Cook. 

224 John Henry Newman. 

225 Catsby Paget. 

226 Frederick W. H. Myers. 

227 Henry F. Lyte. 

228 John Berridge. 

229 John White Chadwick. 

230 Henry Bateman. 

231 Jane Crewdson. 

232 Joseph Hart. 

233 Theodore Parker, 

234 James Hervey. 

235 Augusta L. Hillhouse. 

236 Bishop Thomas Ken. 

237 Caroline Sprague Smith. 

238 Nahum Tate. 

239 Francis Quarles. 

240 Edward Perronet. 

241 Charles Wesley. 

242 Augustus Montague Toplady. 

243 Harriet McEwen Kimball. 

244 Mary C. Hume. 

245 Arthur Cleveland Coxe. 

246 Mrs. Emma C. Willard. 

247 Bishop Richard Mant. 

248 Thomas Miller. 

249 Marie B. Williams. 

250 William Ellery Channing. 

251 William Hayley. 



Only a Year. 

The Stars and Everywhere. 

Miami Words. 

Dedication from His Commonplace Book. 

A Butterfly on a Child's Grave. 

Parted Friends. 

The Silent Land. 

Colin and Lucy. 

Know Thyself. 

The Mountains of Life. 

Ripe Grain. 

The Two Worlds. 

Song. 

Cato. 

To my Books. 

The Chase. 

The Sleep of Years. 

The Husband and Wife's Grave. 

Amen. 

Sonnet on the Thought of Death. 

The Devil's Dream on Mt. Aksbeck. 

Paul Isham. 

Just as I am. 

Just as Thou art. 

The Pillar of the Cloud. 

Hymn. 

A Last Appeal. 

Abide with Me. 

Jesus, cast a Look on Me. 

One with Thee. 

God's Mercy in the Gospel. 

Lays of the Reformation. 

The Paradox. 

The Way, the Truth and the Life. 

Paraphrased from Juvenai. 

The Joy unknown. 

Evening. 

The old Man's Prayer. 

The Birth of Christ. 

Delight in God only. 

Coronation. 

Jesus, Lover of My Soul. 

Rock of Ages. 

All's Well. 

Render to Caesar the things which are 

Caesar's. 
Christmas Carol. 

Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep. 
A Drop of Water. 
Evening Song. 
The first Violet. 
A Poet's Hope. 
The departing Swallows. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



252 Robert K. Weeks. 

253 Edward Rowland Sill. 

254 Willis Gaylord Clarke. 

255 Rev. William Augustus 

Muhlenburg. 

256 Ray Palmer. 

257 William Henry Hurlburt. 

258 Charles F. Richardson. 

259 Henry Ames Blood. 

260 William Dunbar. 

261 Alice Bradley Neal. 

262 Thomas Kelly. 

263 Thomas K. Hervey. 

264 W. T. Moncrieff. 

265 William Black. 

266 John Keble. 

267 Samuel Carter Hall. 

268 Right Rev. Dr. Christopher 

Wordsworth. 

269 James Grahame. 

270 Josiah Gilbert Holland. 

271 Richard Crashaw. 

272 George P. Morris. 

273 Charles Dibdin. 

274 Isaac Bickerstaff. 

275 Paul Moon James. 

276 William Henry Whitworth. 

277 Philip Bourke Marston. 

278 Andrew James Symington. 

279 John Armstrong. 

280 James Russell Lowell. 

281 Hannah More. 

282 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

283 Samuel Daniel. 

284 Sir Thomas Browne. 

285 John Wolcott. 

286 Sir Philip Sidney. 

287 John Trumbull. 

288 Robert Morris. 

289 John Neal. 

290 Joseph Blanco White. 

291 Sumner Lincoln Fairfield. 

292 Thomas Cole. 

293 John Milton. 

294 John Keats. 

295 James Grainger. 

296 Elizabeth F. Lorrain Swift. 

297 James Sheridan Knowles. 

298 Wm. Bourne Oliver Peabody. 

299 Elizabeth A. Starr. 

300 W. Wilsey Martin. 

301 Augustus Mendon Lord. 

302 Edith M. Thomas. 



A Change. 

The dead President. 

An Invitation. 

I would not live Alway. 

My Faith looks up to Thee. 

Faith. 

The Deliverance of Leyden. 

Pro Mortius. 

The Merle and the Nightingale. 

Daybreak. 

We Sing the Praise of Him who Died, 

To One departed. 

Love's Follies. 

At Nonnenwerth. 

Second Sunday after Easter. 

Nature's Creed. 

Sunday. 

The Sabbath. 

Bitter-sweet. First Movement. 

Divine Epigrams. 

My Mother's Bible. 

Poor Jack. 

Love in a Village. 

The Beacon. 

Time and Death. 

In Extremis. 

Nature's Voices. 

Art of Preserving Health. 

The Cathedral. 

Faith. 

The Sleep. 

Sonnets. To Delia. 

Religio Medici. 

To Sleep. 

Sonnet. On Sleep. 

Ode to Sleep. 

Sleep. 

Music of the Night. 

Sonnet on Night. 

An Evening Song of Piedmont. 

Twilight. 

Paradise Lost. 

Grasshopper and Cricket. 

Ode to Solitude. 

Moonlight Upon the Hills. 

William Tell. 

Hymn of Nature. 

In the Timber. 

Quatrains in By The Solent and Danube. 

Winnepesaukee. 

Nature. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



403 Elvira Sydnoe Miller. 

304 Egbert Phelps. 

305 H. H. Boyesen. 

306 Charlotte Young. 

307 Paul H. Hayne. 

308 David Vedder. 

309 George Wither. 

310 Lewis Morris. 

311 Felicia Hemans. 

312 Joanna Baillie. 

313 Oscar Wilde. 

314 Walter Savage Landor. 

315 John Todhunter. 

316 Amelia B. Welby. 

317 Thomas Lake Harris. 

318 Joseph Edwards Carpenter. 

319 Rossiter W. Raymond. 

320 Sidney Lanier. 

321 Robert Bloomfield. 

322 John Sterling. 

323 Theophile Marzials. 

324 Sarah F. Davis. 

325 Charles Jeffreys. 

326 Allan Cunningham. 

327 Mrs. L. M. Blinn. 

328 Denis Florence McCarthy. 

329 Isaak Walton. 

330 Thomas Tod Stoddard. 

331 William Cox Bennett. 

332 Minna Caroline Smith. 

333 Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) 

334 Richard BarnfielcL 

335 Edward Youl. 

336 John Clare. 

337 Thomas W. Parsons. 

338 John Logan (claimed by some 

critics as the production of 
Michael Bruce) 

339 Byron Forceythe Willson. 

340 John Phillips. 

341 Frances Anne Kemble. 

342 Samuel Longfellow. 

343 Elaine Goodale. 

344 William AUingham. 

345 Dr. Samuel Howard. 

346 Alexander Wilson. 

347 James Hog?. 

348 R. D. Blackmore. 

349 Sarah Roberts. 

350 W. W. Fosdick. 

351 M. M. Ballou. 



A Selfish Singer. 

Life's Incongruities. 

Evolution. 

Evening. 

Harvest-time. 

The Temple of Nature. 

The Steadfast Shepherd. 

Songs unsung. 

The Treasures of the Deep. 

The Fisherman's Song. 

Impression du Matin. 

Gebir. 

First Spring Day. 

To a Sea Shell. 

Farewell to Summer. 

What are the wild Waves saying ? 

Song of the Sea by the Royal Garden i 

Naples. 
Hymns of the Marshes. 
May Day with the Muses. 
Daedalus. 
Carpe Diem. 
Summer Song. 
Mary of Argyle. 
The Spring of the Year. 
Little Mary's Wish. 
Summer Longings. 
The Angler's Wish. 
The Angler's trysting Tree. 
Spring Songs. 
June. 

Ode to Spring. 
The Nightingale. 
Song of Spring. 
July. 
A Song for September. 

Ode to the Cuckoo. 

Autumn Song. 

Cider. 

Sonnets. 

November. 

Indian Pipe. 

Frost in the Holidays. 

Song. 

The Bluebird. 

The Skylark. 

A Harvest Song. 

The Voice of the Grass. 

The Maize. 

Flowers. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



352 Robert Nicolls. 

353 Eliza O. Pierson. 

354 Annie D. Green. 

355 Caroline Bowles Southey. 

356 Jones Very. 

357 Isaac Watts. 

358 Mary B. Dodge. 

359 Robert Tannahill. 

360 John Brady. 

361 Horace Smith. 

362 John Home. 

363 Wm. Pitt Palmer. 
^64 Margaret J. Preston. 

365 Will Carleton. 

366 George P. Beard. 

367 Lady Caroline Nairne. 

368 Julia Ward Hcwe. 

369 Alfred Austin. 

370 Frances Ridley Havergal. 

371 Samuel Francis Smuh. 

372 Wallace Bruce. 

373 Mrs. Mary E. Foxwell. 

374 Robert Treat Paine. 

375 John James Piatt. 

376 Timothy Dwigbt. 

377 Joseph Rodman Drake. 

378 William Habingion. 

379 Francis Scott Key. 

380 Henry Brooke. 

381 Francis Davis. 

382 Tobias Smollett. 

383 John Esten Cooke. 

384 G. W. Patten. 

385 James Gates Percival. 

386 Samuel P. Meiriil. 

387 "Rev. Charles Wosfe. 

388 William Collins. 

389 Francis M. Finch. 

390 Henry Timrod. 

391 Samuel Ferguson. 

392 Theodore O'Hara. 

393 Thomas Buchanan Read. 

394 Alice Cary. 

395 George Henry Boker. 

396 Wilfred Scavven Blunt. 

397 John G. Lockhart. 

398 Isaac McLellan. 

399 Thomas Babington Macaulay. 

400 Alexander Hill Everett. 

401 William Aytoun. 

402 John Kenyon. 

403 Washington Allston. 



Wild Flowers. 

Mignonette. 

The Puritan Lovers. 

Autumn Flowers. 

To the painted Columbine. 

The Rose. 

Lily of Lilies. 

The Midge's Dance aboon the Burn. 

Clavis Calendara. 

Hymn to the Flowers. 

Douglas. 

Lines to a Chrysalis. 

The Royal Abbess. 

The Mortgage on the Farm. 

The Farmer's Life. 

The Ploughman. 

Battle Hymn of the Republic. 

Grandmother's Teaching. 

Bells Across the Snow. 

National Hymn. 

The old Homestead. 

Reckoning with the Old Year. 

Adams and Liberty. 

The Two Years. 

Columbia. _ 

The American Flag. 

Night. 

The Star Spangled Banner. 

Gustavus Vasa. 

Wishes and Wishes. 

Independence. 

The Band in the Pines. 

The Seminole's Reply. 

Polish War Song. 

Dirge for a Soldier. 

Burial of Sir John Moore. 

The Death of the Brave. 

Nathan Hale. 

Decoration Ode. 

The Forging of the Anchor. 

The Bivouac of the Dead. 

The Brave at Home. 

The Measure of Time. 

Dirge for a Soldier. 

The Wind and the Whirlwind. 

Broadswords of Scotland. 

New England's Dead. 

Horatius. 

The Young American. 

Burial March of Dundee. 

Upper Austria. 

America to Great Britain. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



% 



404 Mrs. Helen L. Bostvvick. 

405 Maria Jane Jewsbury. 

406 Franklin Lushington. 

407 William Maginn. 

408 Thomas Furlong. 

409 Edward Everett Hale. 

410 Virginia L. French. 

411 Laura C. Redden (Howard 

Glyndon). 

412 Joseph O'Connor. # 

413 Bartholomew Dowling. 

414 Richard Grant White. 

415 Emma Lazarus. 

416 George Walter Thornbury. 

417 Lucius Harward Foote. 

418 Mary Lamb. 

419 Matthias Barr. 

420 Margaret Eytinge. 

421 Francis T. Palgrave. 

422 Charles M. Dickenson. 

423 William C. Richards. 

424 David Macbeth Moir. 

425 David Mallet. 

426 Charles Doyne Sillery. 

427 John Pierpont. 

428 Gerald Massey. 

429 Samuel Hinds. 

430 Daniel Webster. 

431 George S. Burleigh. 

432 Maria White Lowell. 

433 William Morley Punshon. 

434 Robert Gilfiian. 

435 E. C. Lefroy. 

436 Alfred Bunn. 

437 Lucy Hooper. 

438 William Motherwell. 

439 Emily Leith. 

440 Edmund Clarence Stedman. 

441 John Langhorne. 

442 William Dean Howells. 

443 Fitz-Green Halleck. 

444 Epes Sargent. 

445 William B. Wright. 

446 Bishop Beilby Porteus. 

447 J. Hamilton Reynolds. 

448 Arthur J. Mundy. 

449 St. George Tucker. 

450 Mary Pyper. 

451 Susanna Blamire. 

452 Richard Henry Stoddard. 

453 Richard Coe. 

454 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

455 Hester Lynch Salusbury 

Thrale Piozzi. 



Drafted. 

The Flight of Xerxes. 

No More Words. 

I gave my Soldier Boy a Blade. 

The Plagues of Ireland. 

New England's Chevy-Chase. 

The Palmetto and the Pine. 

Mazzini. 

The Hopes of Man. 

The Battle at Fontenoy. 1745. 

Washington. 

Sunrise. 

The three Troopers. 

Red Letter Days. 

Choosing the Name. 

Only a Baby Small. 

Baby Louise. 

To a Child. 

The Children. 

Rosalie. 

Casa Waypy. 

William and Margaret. 

She died in Beauty. 

My Child. 

The Ballad of Babe Christabel. 

The sleeping Baby. 

Lines to a departed Son. 

True Greatness. 

The Morning Glory. 

Trifles. # 

The Exile's Song. 

Sonnets. 

The Light of other Days. 

The old Days we Remember, 

Jeanie Morison. 

Blowing Bubbles. 

The Old Love and the New. 

Elegy. 

Pleasure-pam. 

The World is Bright before Thee. 

The Days that are Past. 

The Brook. 

Death. 

Charles Kemble. 

Violet. 

Days of my Youth. 

Epitaph. A Life. 

The Nabob. 

Never again. 

Emblems. 

The iron Gate. 

The three Warnings. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS, 



456 


William Lamb (Viscount 

Melbourne). 


'Tis Late and I must haste Away. 


457 


Henry Hartshorne. 


A Bundle of Sonnets. 


458 


Robert T. S. Lowell. 


The little Years. 


459 


William Lisle Bowles. 


The Greenwood. 


460 


William Enfield. 


Humility. 


461 


Sir John Beaumont. 


To the Memory of Ferdinando P. Pulton 


462 


Richard Baxter. 


The Valediction. 


463 


Thomas Campbell. 


Lines on leaving a Scene in Bavaria. 


464 


Matthew Prior. 


An Ode. I am That I am. 


465 


Joseph Hall. 


Anthem for the Cathedral of Exeter. 


466 


Caleb C. Colton. 


Life. 


467 


John Webster. 


Duchess of Malfy. 


468 


Thomas Moore. 


This World is all a fleeting Show. 


469 


Charles Kent. 


Dreamland. 


470 


Sir Humphry Davy. 


Written after Recovery from dangerous 

Illness. 


47 1 


Richard Savage. 


The Wanderer. 


47 2 


Frederick West. 


Where are the Dead ? 


473 


Edmund Waller. 


Go, lovely Rose. 


474 


Alexander Pope. 


Essay on Man. 


475 


William R. Thayer (Paul 
Hermes). 


To Truth. 


476 


Charles Mair. 


Tecumseh. 


477 


Benjamin Franklin. 


Woman. 


478 


Thomas Brown. 


The Changefulness of Woman. 


479 


Sir George Etheredge. 


Love in a Tub. 


480 


Julia C. R. Dorr. 
William Havard. 


Twenty-one. 
King Charles I. 


481 


482 


John Crowne. 


Thyestes. 


483 


Bret Harte. 


Miss Blanche's Rose. 


484 


George Gasgoigne. 


The Vanity of the Beautiful. 


485 


Edward Vere ( Fail of Oxford) 


A Renunciation. 


486 


Sir Henry Taylor. 


Philip Van Arteveld. 


487 


Will S. Hayes. 


The new Magdalen. 


488 


Thomas D'Urfey. 


Still Water. The Comical History of 
Don Quixote. 


489 


Kate Field. 


Forty to Twenty. 


490 


Geoffrey Chaucer. 


The Praise of Women. 


491 


Sarah C. Woolsey (Susan 
Coolidge). 


My Rights. 


492 


Edward Brooks. 


Be a Woman. 


493 


H. H. Johnson. 


Woman's Mission. 


494 


Caroline Gilman. 


The household Woman. 


495 


Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 


A Woman's Mood. 


496 


B. E. Wolf. 


What is Woman ? 


497 


Robert C. Sands. 


Yamoyden. 


498 


Sarah Josepha Hale. 


Empire of Woman. 


499 


Estelle Anna Lewis. 


Child of the Sea. 


500 


George Crabbe. 


Woman. 


501 


Florence Peacock. 


After the Fall of Troy. 


502 


James Whyte. 


Simile. 


503 


Henry Carey (sometimes 


The Contriveanees. 



attributed to Henry Fielding). 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



504 Mary J. Lathrop. 

505 Eaton S. Barrett. 

506 David Garrick. 

507 William Ross Wallace. 

508 Adelaide Anne Proctor. 

509 Mary S. B. Dana. 

510 Joseph Brennan. 

511 David Ross Locke (P. V. 

Nasby). 

512 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. 

513 Sir Thomas Overbary. 

514 Charles Robert Maturin. 

515 Edward Moore. 

516 Lindley Murray. 

517 Charles Kingsley. 

518 John Tobin. 

519 Thomas Flatman. 

520 Nathaniel Cotton. 

521 Thomas Haynes Bayly. 

522 Peter A. Motteux. 

523 Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 

524 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. 

525 Sir John Davies. 

526 Margaret E. Sangster, 

527 William Whitehead. 

528 Thomas Southerne. 

529 Elizabeth Charles. 

530 Augustine J. H. Duganne. 

531 Henry T. Tuckerman. 

532 John Howard Payne. 

533 John G. C. Brainerd. 

534 James Graham (Marquis of 

Montrose). 

535 Reginald Heber. 

536 Thomas K. Hervey. 

537 Matthew Arnold. 

538 Joseph Noel Patton. 

539 Mary Anne Browne. 

540 Dion Boucicault. 

541 William Cleaver Wilkinson. 

542 Julia Pardoe. 

543 Amanda T. Jones. 

544 Francis Davison, 

545 Sarah Fuller Flower Adams. 

546 George Linley. 

547 Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 

548 Mary E. Blake. 

549 Robert Burns. 

550 Frederick J. Fargus (Hugh 

Conway). 

551 Mrs. Julia Crawford. 

552 Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

553 Louise Chandler Moulton. 



A Woman's Answer to a Man's Question. 

Woman. 

Advice to Wives. 

The Hand that rocks the World. 

A Woman's Question. 

Passing under the Rod. 

The Exile to his Wife. 

Hannnah Jane. 

The Patriot's Bride. 

A Wife. 

Bertram. 

The happy Marriage. 

To my Wife. 

Dolcino to Margaret. 

The Honeymoon. 

On Marriage. 

The Fireside. 

To my Wife. 

A Roundelay. 

The Sacred Marriage. 

Till Death us Join. 

Contention between a Wife, etc. 

Our Own. 

Variety. 

Oroonoko. 

A Marriage Hymn. 

Castle Building. 

Love and Fame. 

Home, Sweet Home. 

Epithalamium. 

My dear and only Love. 

Sympathy. 

Love. 

Excuse. 

Song. 

Kindred Spirits. 

Led Astray. 

When the Brook and River meet. 

The captive Greek Girl. 

We Twain. 

Poetical Rhapsody. 

Hymn in Vivia Perpetna. 

Song. Though lost to Sight, etc. 

Palabras Carinosas. 

Till To-morrow. 

Ae fond Kiss before we Part. 

Asunder. 

We parted in Silence. 

Christabel. 

Alone by the Bay. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



554 Francis William Bourdillon. 

555 Coventry Patmore. 

556 Arthur Hugh dough. 

557 Hester A. Benedict. 

558 Charles Gamage Eastman. 

559 Hattie Tyng Griswold. 

560 John Ruskin. 

561 Benjamin Hathaway. 

562 James Berry Bensel. 

563 Elizabeth Bogart. 

564 Algernon Charles Swinburne. 

565 J. H. McNaughton. 

566 Rose Terry Cooke. 

567 Will Meredith Nicholson. 

568 Caroline Elizabeth Sarah 

Norton. 

569 William Congreve. 

570 John Wilmot (Earl of Roch- 

ester). 

571 Sir Robert Aytoun. 

572 Sir Charles Sedley. 

573 Lady MarvWortley Montague. 
' 574 William B'. Terrett. 

575 Thomas Lodge. 

576 William Walsh. 

577 John Oldmixon. 

578 Katherine Philips. 

579 Sir John Suckling. 

580 F. W. Hume. 

581 John Boyle O'Reilly. 

582 Eliza C. Hall. 

583 James Thomson. 

584 Henry Constable. 

585 Alexander Maclagan. 

586 Alexander Broome. 

587 J. Augustus Wade. 

588 Elizabeth Henry Miller. 

589 James A. Noble. 

590 Thomas Watson. 

591 Chas. Hanbury Williams 

592 Thomas Middleton. 

593 Robert Hegge. 

594 James Hedderrick. 

595 Robert Greene. 

596 Bernard Barton. 

597 Lady Mary Wroth. 

598 William Blake. 

599 Mrs. t Mary Blackford Tighe. 

600 William Winter. 

601 George Arnold. 

602 Marah Ellis Ryan. 

603 Maurice Thompson. 

604 Thomas Ragg. 



Light. 

Parting. 

Qua Cursum Ventus, 

Good-night. 

A Dirge. 

Under the Daisies. 

Agonia. 

By the Fireside. 

Two. 

He came too Late. 

Fragoletta. 

Onnalinda. 

Two. 

Faithless. 

Love not. 

The Way of the World. \ 

Constancy. 

Woman's Inconstancy. 

Reasons for Constancy. 

Advice. 

Platonic. 

Rosaline. 

Rivalry in Love. 

Song. I lately Vowed but 'twas in Haste. 

The Inquiry. 

Constancy. 

My Lady Disdain. 

Introduction to the Temple of Friendship. 

An international Episode. 

The Lover's Fate. 

Diaphenia. 

A Sister's Love. 

Why I love Her. 

Meet me by Moonlight. 

Now and Ever. 

The Pelican Papers. 

Sonnets. 

Dear Betty. 

Happiness of married Life. 

On Love. 

Love. 

Ah, what is Love? 

Not ours the Vows. 

Song. 

How sweet I roamed from Field to Field. 

Psyche. 

Love's Queen. 

Recrimination. 

Love's Birth. 

Garden Statues. Eros. 

Heber. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



l 3 



605 John Leyden. 

6o5 John Philip Varley. 

607 Thomas Stanley. 

608 Aubrey Thomas De Vere. 

609 William Gibson. 
6io Thomas Hood. 

611 Sidney H. Morse. 

612 James B. Kenyon. 

613 Dr. John Donne. 

614 Matthew Royden. 

615 James Clarence Mangan. 

616 Sidney Dobell. 

617 Charles Graham Halpine. 

618 Thomas Westwood. 

619 Robert Josselyn. 

620 Richard Allison. 

621 E. J. McPhelein. 

622 John Skelton. 

623 John Shaw. 

624 John Moultrie. ' 

625 George Meredith. 

626 W. Chamberlayne. 

627 Aaron Hiil. 

628 James H. Perkins. 

629 Philip Pendleton Cooke. 

630 Barton Booth. 

631 J. Ashby-Sterry.^ 

632 Edward Coate Pinkney. 

633 Edward Bulwer-Lytton. 

634 Ben Johnson. 

635 Hector McNeill. 

636 Charles Lamb. 

637 Joel Chandler Harris. 

638 Thomas Hey wood. 

639 Ellen P. Allerton. 

640 Henry Hart Milman. 

641 Lord Edward Tluiriow. 

642 E. H. Burnngton. 

643 Henry G. Bohn. 

644 William James Linton. 

645 Miss E. T. Ciapp. 

646 Isabella F. Mayo (Edward 

Garrett). 

647 William W. Story. 

648 George Houghton. 

649 James A. Garfield. 

650 Samuel Stillman Conant. 

651 Francis DeHaes Sanvier. 

652 Frances Brown. 

653 W. W. Ellsworth. 

654 William Cleland. 

655 Charles Churchill. 



Ode to the evening Star. 

The Nature of Love. 

The Deposition. 

Song. Seek not the Tree of silkiest Bark. 

Hymn to Freya. 

Fair Inez. 

Sundered. 

My Lady. 

On the Death of Mistress Drury. 

An Elegy on a Friend's Passion for his 

Astrophel. 
And then no More. 
Balder. 

Janette's Hair. 
The proudest Lady. 
The young Widow. 
An Houre's Recreation in Musike. 
Her Majesty. 
Merry Margaret. 

Who has robbed the ocean Cave ? 
Here's to Thee, my Scottish Lassie. 
Love in the Valley. 
Pharonnida. 
Modesty. 
The upright Soul. 
Florence Vane. 

Sweet are the Charms of her I Love. 
Number 1. 
A Health. 

The Language of the Eyes. 
The sweet Neglect. 
Mary of Castle Cary. 
Hester. 
Agnes. 

A Description of a most noble Lady. 
Beautiful Things. 
The Apollo Belvidere. 
Beauty. 
The Beautiful. 
Dictionary of Quotations. 
Real and True. 
The Future is better than the Past. 

Unfulfilled. 

The three Singers. 

Courage. 

Memory. 

Release. 

The Voyage of Life. 

Losses. 

Nightfall. 

Hallo, my Fancie. 

Night, or On the Poverty of Poets. 



14 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



656 Richard Hengist Home. 

657 John Burroughs. 

658 Thomas Love Peacock. 

659 Frederick H. Hedge. 

660 John Ford. 

66 1 Minnie C. Ballard. 

662 Lady Emmeline Stuart 

Wortley. 

663 George W. Bungay. 

664 Robert J. Burdette. 

665 Robert Barry Coffin. 

666 Harriet Prescott Spofford, 

667 Delle W. Norton. 

668 George MacDonald. 

669 Lilian Whiting. 

670 L. S. Metcalf. 

671 Robert Edward Bulwer- 

Lytton. 

672 Helen Chase. 

673 Fitz James O'Brien. 

674 Mary A. Townsend. 

675 May Riley Smith. 

676 Letitia Elizabeth Lawdon. 

677 Constance Fenimore Wool- 

son. 

678 James Wallis Eastburn. 

679 George R. Sims. 
63o Julian Hawthorne. 

681 John Herman Merivale. 

682 James Ryder Randall. 

683 A. Stephen Wilson. 

684 McDonald Clarke. 

685 Rev. J.L.Wells; also attribu- 

ted to Michael J. Fanning. 

686 John Sirmond ; attributed aslo 

to Henry Aldrich. 

687 Samuel Woodworth. 

688 William Allen Butler. 

689 George W. Young 

690 John W. Storrs. 

691 .Thomas Chatterton. 

692 Thomas Gray. 

693 Ralph Hoyt 

694 Elizabeth Doten. 

695 John Greenleaf Whittier. 

696 James Herbert Morse. 

697 Albert Pike. 

698 Lucy Evelina Akerman. 

699 Richard Henry Wilde. 

700 Maria Gowen Brooks. 

701 Mrs. John Hunter. 

702 William Gilmore Simms. 



Solitude and the Lily. 

Waiting. 

Castles in the Air. 

Questionings. 

The Real and the Ideal. 

Burnt Ships. 

Dreams. 

Our Ships at Sea. 
When my Ship comes in. 
Ships at Sea. 
Left Ashore. 
The missing Ship. 
Song in Phantastes. 
Two Points of View. 
Right and Wrong. 

Changes. 

Beating into the Harbor. 
The lost Steamship. 
A Woman's Wish. 
If we knew. 
Lines of Life. 

Two Women. 

To Pneuma. 
Ostler Joe. 

Free Will. 

Evil, be Thou My Good. 
Maryland, My Maryland. 
Crumbs of Verse. 
The Rumhole. 

Cranks of To-day. 

Causae Bibendi. 

Old Oaken Bucket. 

The new Argonauts. 

The Lips that touch Liquor must never 

touch Mine. 
Only. 
A'ella. 

The Progress of Poesy. 
The World for Salt. 
Light, more Light. 
Mabel Martin. 
The Lighthouse. 
Every Year. 
Nothing but Leaves. 
My Life is like the summer Rose. 
Song from Zophiel. 
The Lot of Thousands. ' 
The Lost Pleiad. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



15 



703 William Knox. 

704 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. 

705 A. Bronson Alcott. 

706 John Fletcher. 

707 Lucy White Jennison (Owen 

Innsley). 

708 William R. Spencer. 

709 William Makepeace Thackeray 

710 Thomas Carlyle. 

711 Henry D. Thoreau. 

712 Gerald Griffin. 

713 Celia Thaxter. 

714 Mary Frances Butts. 

715 E. J. Pope. ^ 

716 Mrs. Charles Tinsley. 

717 Mary Clemmer Hudson. 

718 Norman McLeod. 

719 Anna L. Waring. 

720 Ann S. Stephens. 

721 Mrs. J. M. Winton. 

722 Henry S. Kent. 

723 Madge Morris Wagner. 

724 S. K. Phillips. 

725 William Bell Scott 

726 Lewis J. Bates. 

727 John Wilson. 

728 William Legget (A Sacred 

Melody). 

729 Abram J. Ryan. 

730 George Parsons Lathrop 

731 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 

732 Sallie Ada Vance. 

733 Mrs. Frances Macartney 

Greville. 

734 Charles Swain, 

735 Mrs. Jane C. Simpson. 

736 Lady Elizabeth Carew 

737 M. H. Cobb. 

738 Mary Keely Boutelle. 

739 Major Calder Campbell. 

740 Thomas Noon Talfourd. 

741 Thomas Holcroft. 

742 David Bates. Attributed 

also to G. W. Langford 

743 John Sheffield (Duke of 

Buckinghamshire). 

744 W. G. Wills. 

745 Henry Howard Brownell. 

746 J. W. De Forest. 

747 Thomas Moss. 

748 Thomas Noel. 

749 Lady W. A. Wilde. 

750 Thomas Gibbons. 



O, Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud? 
Closing Chords. 
Love's Morrow. 
The Nice Valor. 

Bondage. 

Too Late I stayed. 

At the church Gate (from Pendennis). 
Adieu. 
April Days. 
Xo ***** 
Wherefore ? 
Why? 

The Building of the Ship. 
The new Order of Nobility 
The Journalist. 
Courage. 

Thy Will be Done. 
Dropping Leaves. 
Better than Gold. 
Questions. 
The Golden Gate. 
We Shall Be Satisfied, 
Rose Leaves. 
By and bye. 
The Evening Cloud. 

Meeting Above. 

Fragments from an epic Poem. 
Fairhaven Bay. 
A Last Confession. 
Guard thine Action. 

A Prayer for Indifference. 

Forgive and Forget. 

Tedium Vitae. 

Mariam. 

The World would be the Better for it. 

Only a Word. 

Idle Words. 

Ion. 

Gaffer Gray. 

Speak Gently. 

Essay on Poetry. 

Gratitude. 

The Famine. 

Quatrain. 

The Beggar. 

The Pauper's Drive. 

The Exodus. 

When Jesus dwelt. 






i6 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS. 



Carlos Wilcox. 

Agnes Marv Frances Robinson. 
William M. Clark. 
Mary Howitt (from Hans 
Andersen). 
Edwin Arnold. 
Frederick Langbridge. 
James Whitcomb Riley 
Sir Walter Scott. 
7 James T. Fields. 

760 David Gray. 

761 Helen Gray Cone. 
Edmund Gosse. 
Evelyn Douglas. 
Jane Tavlor. 
Robert Pollok. 
Cosmo Monkhouse. 
Andrew Lang. 
William Watson. 
Jonathan Swift. 
George Colman. 
George Otto Trevelyan. 

John Hookhand Frere. 

Charles Stuart Calverley. 

Winthrop M. Praed. 

William B. Rhodes. 

Mark Lemon. 

James Freeman Clarke, (after 

Geothe). 
Henry S. Leigh. 
William Schwenck Gilbert. 
Edgar Fawcett. 
Mortimer Collins. 
John Finley. 
H. C. Bunner. 
Augusta Webster. 
Walter Learned. 
Edmund Yates. 
Thomas Randolph. 
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 
Lady Helen Selina Sheridan 

Dufferin. 

790 Leigh Hunt (Rondeau). 

791 Vigil A. Pinkley. 

792 William Strode. 

793 George John Cayley. 

794 Sallie M. B. Piatt. 

795 J- Russell Fisher. 

796 Fitz-Hugh Ludlow. 

797 Matthew Gregory Lewis. 

798 J. A. Macon. 

799 Alfred Dommett. 



7Si 

752 
753 
754 

755 
756 
757 
753 
759 



762 
763 
764 
765 
766 
767 
768 
769 
770 
771 

772 

773 

774 
77a 
776 

in 

778 

779 
780 
781 
782 
783 
784 
785 
786 
787 
788 
789 



The Cure for Melancholy. 
Prologue to the New Arcadia. 
Song of the Winter Winds. 

New Year's Eve. 

The Three Roses. 

The Parson's Comforter. 

God Bless Us Every One. 

Marmion. 

Courtesy. 

Epitaph. 

A Nocturne of Rubenstein. 

Verdleip;h Coppice. 

The golden City. 

Life. 

The Course of Time. 

De Libris. 

Ballade of the Book-hunter. 

Epigram. 

Stella's Birthday. 

My Muse and I. 

The Owl's Song. 

Prospectus and Specimens of Intended 

National Work. 
Lovers and a Reflection. 
Twenty-eight and Twenty-nine. 
Bombastes Furioso. 
Old Time and I. 

The Rule with no Exceptions. 

Rotten Row. 

To the terrestrial Globe. 

The buntling Ball. 

If. 

Bachelor's Hall. 

Yes. 

Song. 

An Explanation. 

Twenty and Thirty. 

Song of Fairies. 

The School for Scandal. 

Katy's Letter. 

Jennie Kissed Me. 

The model American Girl. 

Kisses. 

An Epitaph. 

Caprice at Home. 

Plantation Proverbs. 

Too Late. 

A Matrimonial Duet. 

Theology in the Quarters. 

Christmas Hymn. 



KEY TO QUOTATIONS, 



800 


John Hay. 


Little Breeches. 




801 


Charles G. Leland. 


The Three Friends. 




802 


Hugh Rhodes. 


Cautions. 




803 


William Shenstone. 


Lines written on the Window of 

Henley. 
The Traveler. 


an Inn at 


804 


Oliver Goldsmith. 




805 


Samuel Rogers. 


Italy. 




806 


Bishop George Berkeley. 


On the prospect of planting 
Learning in America. 


Arts and 


807 


Nathaniel Parker Willis. 


Parrhasius and the Captive. 




808 


Daniel De Foe. 


The true-born Englishman. 




809 


William Lillo. 


Fatal Curiosity. 




810 


John Dryden. 


Aureng-Zebe. 




811 


Sir J. Harrington. 


Epigram, Fortune. 




812 


Thomas Tusser. 


Good husbandly Lessons. 




813 


Matthew Green. 


The Spleen. 




814 


Kane O'Hara. 


Midas. 




815 


Edmund Spenser. 


The Faerie Queen. 




816 


Thomas Carew. 


Mediocrity in Love rejected. 




817 


Mrs. Hester Chapone. 


Ode to Solitude. 




818 


Mrs. Frances Laughton Mace. 


Only Waiting. 




819 


Richard Lovelace. 


To Althea, from Prison. 




820 


Joshua Sylvester. 


Contentment. 




821 


John Bunyan. 


Pilgrim's Progress. 




822 


Sir Henry Wotton. 


Character of a happy Life. 




823 


Thomas Lovell Beddoes. 


Dream — Pedlary. 




824 


Sir Walter Raleigh. 


The Pilgrimage. 




825 


John Taylor. 


" Nonsence upon Sence." 





NOTES. 



£41 Often credited to Dr. Guthrie. 

150 Credited to John Dowling by William Bird. 

152 Sometimes credited to " Early Christian Bard," with English translation 

by Dr. O'Donnovan. 
338 James Grant Wilson and W. J. Linton both claim Bruce as author, but 

generally credited to Logan. 
360 Richard Brinsley Sheridan has a stanza exactly like this, except that names 

of months are used instead of seasons. 
408 Credited in England " Notes and Queries " to Lord Edward Fitzgerald. 
479 Etheredge's line reads " You are not free because you're fair. " 
497 This part of Yomoyden was probably written by Sands. 

503 Credited by Bryant and many others to Henry Fielding, with title, " The 

Maiden's Choice." 

504 Usually credited to E. B. Browning, but not found in her works. 
507 Also credited to Hobbe L. Prentiss. 

516 Copied by Murray from John Lapraik, 1717-1807. 

526 Credited also to initials S. H. T. 

540 This has been credited to the initials W. B., supposed to be William Ball. 

Dion Boucicault claims to have written the lines himself for the play " Led 

Astray." 
544 Published anonymously in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody in 1602. W. H. 

Davenport Adams gives it as anonymous as does also Francis T. Palgrave. 
614 Often credited to Spenser. The stanza is said to have been published 

anonymously at first and afterward incorporated in several " Laments." 
638 Also credited to John Heywood the epigrammatist. 
539 Credited often to David Swing, but he says he did not write it, 
645 Credited erroneously to Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
686 Bartlett gives Henry Aldrich from Biog. Britannica. 
747 Also credited to Sir John Morris, 



